The Laughter of Carthage

NINE

HAVING PROVIDED POPULAR amusement for Turks, I was now a source of cheap comedy to the Greeks. The soldiers were dressed in British khaki tunics and tin helmets but had on white trousers and green puttees. When they saw me, they grinned, lowering their rifles. I stopped singing and, still struggling, glared back at them. They made no effort to help. I was close to weeping, trying weakly to get to my feet. In English and French, I implored their assistance. They refused to understand, rubbing unshaven chins, making jokes about me as if I were no more than a hamstrung calf. When I began to cry out my few words of Greek they found this still more hilarious, only subsiding when their officer emerged onto the roof. He was about thirty-five, with large black eyes and a dark Imperial. Unlike his men, he wore a complete Greek olive-coloured uniform. He carried a long, curved sword, a holstered pistol at his belt. Wrist on hip, he stared down at me, his legs spread, brows furrowed. When he spoke it was in Greek to silence his men, then in Turkish, to me. I shook my head, anxious to rid him of that impression immediately. ‘M’sieu, if you will allow me -’

Half-smiling, he said in French: ‘Aha! It is not a bandit at all, but a pigeon. A pigeon too fat to fly!’

Summoning all possible dignity, I craned my neck to look directly into his face. ‘M’sieu, I am an officer of the Russian Volunteer Army. Would you be good enough to release me from this harness?’

‘A Bolshevik pigeon, is it? Even better. Trying to carry a message back to General Trotski?’

‘You misunderstand me, m’sieu. I am a loyal supporter of the monarchy. My wife is English. I live in Constantinople. I have been a captive of those Turkish brigands for some time and was attempting to escape when, thank God, you attacked. I am also a scientist. I have credentials. The highest. From St Petersburg.’

‘I’d heard the Nationalists had Russian officers with them,’ said the captain, ignoring most of what I had said. ‘Are you sure you’re not lying, m’sieu?’

‘On my oath as a Christian and a gentleman, I’m telling you the truth!’

‘But how did you join these Nationalists?’ Though I doubted they could understand him, his men continued grinning broadly. He did nothing to admonish them. He signed for two of them to help me to my feet. I was sweating horribly; my back was in agony. ‘I did not join them,’ I said patiently. ‘I was lured here by means of a trick. I have plans they want.’

Slowly, with studied curiosity, the captain strutted round me. He tested the wing on my right arm. He looked at the tailplane sticking out from behind. Squatting down he pulled at one of the wires leading from my ankles to the rudder. ‘Then why on earth didn’t you fly away?’

‘I had no petrol,’ I said.

The officer could not resist translating this to his men, whereupon they became almost helpless with laughter. He chose to think I had simply forgotten to put petrol in the tank. ‘M’sieu,’ I said to him desperately, ‘I am in some considerable pain. Would you oblige me by unstrapping these wings so I may relieve myself of the engine?’

He gestured at me, giving an order. With surprising gentleness his men began unfastening the little straps. Future planes, I decided, must be made lighter. I had learned from this experience. Certain features must be redesigned. I must invent a quick-release mechanism, to avoid similar dilemmas. Soon the Greeks had stripped off the various pieces, piling them carefully in the middle of the roof. I rubbed my bruised and chafed body, accepting a sip of brandy from the captain’s flask. I saluted. ‘My name is Major Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski (it was impolitic to claim my rank of Colonel) of the White Russian Army. I have served as a flyer and with Intelligence. I was recently evacuated from Odessa on the British vessel Rio Cruz. All these things can be verified, m’sieu.’

The captain seemed abstracted, nodding vaguely in reply as he looked over the plane. ‘Does this fly?’

I felt somewhat impatient with the question. ‘I was about to find out, m’sieu!’

He wheeled suddenly to face me. He shook my hand warmly. Apparently I had passed some kind of test. ‘Good afternoon to you, sir. I am Captain Paparighopoulos. You are a brave man. Let’s have a drink together.’

Hobbling beside him as we descended into the street, I became aware of sounds similar to those I had heard only three days earlier. Here almost an identical scene was being re-enacted, only now it was Turks kneeling in the square by the fountain while other Turks carried treasures from their mosques. Elsewhere, Greek soldiers shot at every bobbing fez they caught sight of, or dragged threshing women from their houses. I could not find it in my heart to criticise this savagery. Greeks had been persecuted for hundreds of years by the Turks and were taking vengeance at last. Since the fall of Byzantium they had longed for this. More buildings began to roar. The heat was terrible. The thick smoke made my eyes water. As we crossed the square, two soldiers appeared. They had found my miserable Hassan. He cowered between them, looking pleadingly at me. ‘He says he’s your assistant. A mechanic.’ Captain Paparighopoulos told me after questioning the boy in rapid Turkish, ‘Is that true? We need mechanics.’

‘He’s a bandit,’ I said.

Hassan became passive as they led him away. On the tower of the mosque they were raising a Greek flag. It was a deeply moving sight, the white cross on its blue background waving in the Turkish breeze. Captain Paparighopoulos had set up his headquarters in a carpet shop looking onto the square. Here we drank strong, clear liquid which he said was local vodka. It made my head swim. He offered me a little bread and sausage. ‘The Turks took most of the food with them.’ I realised I had eaten virtually nothing in two days, so obsessed had I been with building my machine. Hassan, I knew, had sold the meat left us by Çerkes Ethem. ‘The rebels passed us to the North,’ said the captain. ‘Looking for our position, I think.

We in turn were hiding in the hills, trying to find their base.’ He gave a shrug of sardonic disappointment. ‘I was certain this was it.’

They had been pushing up from Smyrna all spring. By the end of the year he predicted the whole of Anatolia would be under Greek control. ‘Kemal’s a good soldier, but he has poor human material. The bandits are out for themselves. They serve with us when it suits them. These people don’t care who rules them. They probably think Greeks are a reasonable change from Turks.’ He regarded without expression the scene in the square. His men were executing Moslems. Three soldiers, evidently drunk, herded a group of naked girls from one wrecked emporium into another. ‘They’re used to cruelty here.’ He spoke as if I had criticised him, then he yawned and began to roll himself a cigarette. ‘We’ll get you back to civilisation, M. Pyatnitski, don’t worry.’

The French and the Italians betrayed them. Greece had only recently rediscovered her pride. She brought the banner of Christ into the heart of Islam. She carried the sword of vengeance. Byzantium was in Christian hands! The Turkish nation had all but ceased to exist. It would have vanished, absorbed by a nobler Greek Empire, a wonder of the world. But the French and Italians, fearing that shining alliance of Greek and Briton, put their heads together to find a way of blocking this marriage of Old and New Hellenism. They used the easiest means. They gave guns to Kemal; they encouraged Zaharoff and his Jews to sell the Turks cannon and tanks, even as Zaharoff himself shook hands in Athens with Venizelos, swearing eternal brotherhood. In Marseilles brokers who had never heard of Ankara sent arms there and made enormous profits while New York stockmarket men spoke softly into telephones and killed a thousand Greek warriors. Merchants in Rome and Berlin, serving neither Cross nor Crescent, grew rich because in Anatolia the two were locked in a death struggle. And Lloyd George, and Lord Curzon, Winston Churchill, Venizelos, Woodrow Wilson, all the politicians, full of fine intentions, full of ideals and willing to cheer every Greek victory, themselves became confounded, were turned from their purpose.

They were too long over the maps, debating new boundaries, worrying about Pakistanis and Arabs whose feelings might be wounded if Islam were routed in Thrace. Concerned for their own Egyptian and Palestinian possessions, they wavered in their enthusiasm. The children of Athens and Sparta marched into Asia Minor’s barren vastness naked and defenceless behind the flag of Christ. Innocently they had believed the sentimental assurances of old, empty men. They had no weapons. Lloyd George sent them no cannon and Winston Churchill gave them no ships. Lord Curzon next feared that by ‘giving’ Turkey to the Greeks he might ‘lose’ India. And so the greatest opportunity of the World War was lost: the one real advantage that would have provided us with universal peace was let slip while Crusader conquerors, as they had done so frequently before, quarrelled and connived.

Those noble Greeks lay dying in Anatolian deserts and Armenian swamps. Their blood ripened Islamic corn to feed Islamic soldiers. Meanwhile the King of England cried ‘Kneel Zaharoff’ and ‘Rise Sir Basil’, touching the great sword, which for centuries defended Christ’s honour, to the shoulders of that Satanic Jew. In the Houses of Parliament, wearing ermine robes and golden crowns, new-minted barons laze on benches, lifting jewelled cups in mock homage to the Union Jack, the three crosses which are One. Swaggering lords of the East have insinuated themselves and their families into the very heart of England, as once they inhabited the Court of Byzantium. They control the destinies of Christian millions. They even pretend to worship in Christian churches. They have made this island retreat a base for international crime. They are worse than common pirates, for they take no personal risks and steal the lifeblood of nations. Does their booty contribute to the glory of England? No! It sits in Switzerland where every day little pink women come to the vaults with buckets of soap and disinfectant to scrub the gold bars until they gleam like mirrors. Where were the gentlemen of Blighty? What happened to an Empire which sent Lords Byron and Shelley to drown fighting in the Hellespont, leading their brave little armies against the might of Osman?

What insanity corrupted the British after the Great War? It was commercial greed and debilitating socialism, united by the mortar of false pride. I have seen Empires collapse across the world, and it is always at the hand of the Red and the Jew. ‘Look,’ cries Harold Wilson, ‘you are rich. You can swing. You can join the Common Market. You can give up your homes to Pakistanis.’ I have heard him on the television. ‘You must compete,’ he says, ‘like the Americans. You must borrow more money. You must be better than your neighbour.’ And when the worker refuses to work, because his job is threatened by a black, this great Socialist, Champion of the Mob, turns on the worker. He is unpatriotic if he asks for more money. He is reminded of the Spirit of Dunkirk, of his national honour and pride. But Harold Wilson has said that honour and pride are old-hat. Money is of paramount importance. And they come into my shop with their posters to tell me the Labour Party looks after my interests! It looks after nobody save financiers and party members. It is no different to Moscow. Stalin destroyed a nation, then called on the ghosts of great nationalists, on those he had himself murdered, to rally the people against Hitler. Honour means nothing to them. It is only a bell to which people salivate; but when it rings, nobody answers. The people yearn desperately for the restoration of their pride and their religion. It returned briefly to Greece, then the Reds, the Jews, the Mapmakers arrived to steal it away again, purchasing it for forged currency, grinning at it, mocking it as if at Christ Himself. It was Socialists, not Tories, who celebrated Pragmatism over Honour. National pride was sold as a job lot during the Swinging Sixties. It was sold in Carnaby Street and Brussels, on Union Jack underpants and Lord Kitchener carrier-bags. It left the country on umbrellas, baskets, ashtrays and plaster guardsmen carried back to America and Japan. When they came to call upon it, in their need, there was nothing left. National Pride was a melted ice cream on the steps of the Tate Gallery, a broken trinket on the floor of an Air Singapore jumbo, a comic bowler hat sported by a Saudi schoolboy. The Silver Jubilee will be a miserable remnant sale. Scraps of honour will be hawked by Asian ragamuffins, like false holy relics, to drunken foreign mobs along Pall Mall. For if Britain betrayed her past when she betrayed the Greeks, she also betrayed her future, the greatest folly of all. They sent Greeks naked into battle. The British watched Russians run from Ukraine and Georgia and did nothing. They watched Polish cavalry flood into Galicia and Moldavia, grabbing lands coveted for centuries. They watched Socialists march through the streets of Munich and Hamburg. Helplessly they threw up their hands as Gandhi hurled his dissident armies against the Crown, as Irish Republican gangsters blew up police barracks and bombed post offices. And fastidious America drew away from the chaos she had helped create. She said she was disgusted with Europe and elected a President who turned his back on his own heritage, driving his nation towards the dream which almost destroyed it.

They gave women the vote, listened to Nellie Melba on their radios and thought they saw the road to Utopia. Here and there pockets of farsighted men tried to stem the tide. Admiral Horthy fought against Communism. Hungarians knew what it was to fear the Turk. Still the Great Powers laughed in putrid complacency while signing papers sentencing whole countries of Christians to tyranny and death. But the single, most powerful symbol of this betrayal remained their refusal to support Greek against Turk. Christ was stripped naked. He was flogged. He was recrucified. Not by the Pharisees, however. It was the Romans, the very people He sought to save, who betrayed Him. Jehovah was a Jew, but Christ was a Greek. Let the Jews have their drooling Jehovah, their Judah Ben Hur, their Jonah, Jeremia, Joshua and their Judas. We shall keep Jesus. We shall defend Him. Kyrios, the Lord! The Cross is Greek. Byzantium is our capital. Wann werden wir Zurück sein? We shall take up our spears to drive forth the red-eyed wolf, the hot-tempered jackal and the gibbering ape! Our honour shall shine golden as the sun. We shall be radiant with our zeal and our courage; we shall be like Angels come to Earth, reclaiming the pride of Christendom, erecting the Cross at the centre of the world. Let no man try to injure me, for my shield is strong. It deflects all lies. I cannot be confused by their calumnies. They would turn me from my true path; they whisper about my blood. Mine is the blood of the Christian Cossack! No metal can pollute it. No metal shall pour its rust into my veins! I am mercury. I am silver. My stomach is strong. They tried to weaken me, praying over me when I was too small to resist. That quasi-Abraham! What did he mean by it? My father took his knife and cut me. In the name of Progress he branded me with the mark of Judas. But I have laughed at all my enemies. On clashing, silver wings I fly over their heads and resist the bodies of their whores. I escape their arrows as easily as their threats! My honour is whole. They shall not condemn me as they condemned the Greek.

I sat drinking with Captain Paparighopoulos and was soon unable to feel the pain in my back. From time to time one of his staff would run up to the carpet shop requiring orders. He would give them airily after a while, quite as drunk as I was. But a certain order seemed to have reference to me and towards evening, he gripped my shoulder, pointing towards the roof of the wool exchange. He chuckled, handing me his fieldglasses so I could see better.

They had strapped my prototype onto the wretched Hassan. Helplessly I watched them pour petrol into the engine, spin the propeller and send the boy screaming and wailing from the roof to his death. Captain Paparighopoulos was highly amused. ‘I wished to help you test the machine.’ I tried to tell him it needed expert handling, but he refused to listen. It had been Hassan’s chance, he said, to fly either to freedom or to Paradise.

The machine was smashed to pieces. Through the glasses I saw the boy’s twisted, bloody body twitching in the wreckage. He deserved no more, I suppose, for his part in tricking me, yet it was an unpleasant sight and has remained imprinted in my memory. A thoroughly wasted opportunity.

A day later I was borne back to Scutari, first in the armoured train, then in a Crossley car, with all honours. On the train a Greek colonel acted as my host, taking notes as I gave him my information. Count Siniutkin would be arrested, he promised; also those who worked with him, Turkish and foreigners both. The colonel had a bronzed genial face and a walrus moustache. He looked like a good-natured Georgian patriarch. He told me I should go to Athens. Greeks respected courage and learning. I wish I had listened more carefully. When the Greeks had conquered Turkey, he said, they would secure the Balkans and the Caucasus until they could easily challenge Trotski himself. My mother, he promised heavily, would be saved. I believed him. How was I to know that secret treaties in Whitehall and Washington already sealed the doom of Greece, supplying them with unkept promises with which to go against Zaharoff’s eighty-pounders? Hellenic youth was to be crucified on Turkish bayonets stamped ‘Made in France’, torn on barbed-wire twisted by Roman Catholic women in the factories of Turin. It was once said of Lord Palmerston that if an individual behaved as he made his nation behave, he would immediately be ostracised by Society. Palmerston reduced English politics to their crudest, most self-serving, short-sighted level, then compounded it all by making a Jew his successor! His shadow fell across the conference tables and condemned half of modern Europe to death. They thought it more important to squeeze a few more marks from Germany than to preserve the ideals for which their kinsmen had died.

The Crossley took me directly to Haidur Pasha where again I was cleared by the British authorities. I attempted to give them my information, but they said they already had the Greek colonel’s report. I was to return home with very little to show for my adventures. I had discarded my ruined business clothes for a Greek army shirt and breeches, British shoes and puttees, a French greatcoat. I resembled any of those Russians presently falling back in growing numbers from Bolshevik ferocity. As I went down to the Scutari square, to the quays to board a ferry, I found myself in the company of several poor devils just evacuated from Yalta. They asked whom I had fought under and in what part of the country. I told them I was from Kiev, a liaison officer with the Allied Forces, though I had been a prisoner of Reds and Greens. They were half dead with fatigue, completely confused. They hoped to get to South America and join the Argentines, since there was obviously no hope for them in Constantinople. They knew this from relatives in the city. Their next step was to sign on a banana boat as soon as possible. Letters from comrades reported rich pickings and an easy life for trained soldiers in South America. As we stepped off the ferry I wished them luck, then, in trepidation, made my way on foot up the steep Galata streets until at last I reached the Grande Rue which, for no specific reason, I had expected to be changed. Incredibly, I had been away for no more than ten days. It seemed like months and I was frightened something had happened to Esmé. Without my protection she could have fallen victim to any one of the entrepreneurs prowling Tokatlian’s. Had not Count Siniutkin used the place as his headquarters? I was sure some white slaver had already priced her beauty. I therefore had a sense of gloomy expectation of disaster as, from the alley, I slipped through Tokatlian’s back entrance and up to our suite. I was convinced the Count had never sent my telegram.

Somewhere between Scutari and Ankara I had lost my keys. I knocked on the door of our suite, expecting no answer. My heart thumped. I was drenched in nervous sweat. From below in the restaurant, even though it was only four in the afternoon, came the sound of music, the hum of conversation. All I had to show for my adventure were a few sovereigns and a bruised back. My prototype was destroyed, my plans burned.

The door opened. Esmé was there. She gasped, began to cry, then smiled. After a second’s hesitation (doubtless because of my strange costume) she threw her little soft arms around my neck and enthusiastically kissed me all over my unshaven face. I shook with sudden relief. My fears had been groundless and all was well. Had she received a telegram? She said she had not. She had believed herself deserted. Then she guessed I must be dead. I should never have crossed to the Asian Shore, she said. The Turks were animals over there.

As I bathed and changed I told her something of my experiences. Although still unusually nervous, she was open-mouthed, reacting dramatically to every new piece of my tale. This attention, displaying her evident pleasure at my return, helped refresh me. Flinging myself onto our cushions, I asked her to bring us some cocaine and I sent downstairs for coffee and food. She prepared the drug in the way I had taught her. I saw our supply was extremely low; far lower than I liked it to get. I smiled tolerantly. ‘You’ve been a greedy little monkey!’ She flushed. Wearing only her white lace petticoats she looked as pretty and ordinarily wholesome as any well-bred Russian girl. Filled with love, I took her in my arms and kissed her. I was sorry I had not brought her a present, I said. She began to stammer a reply, then I pulled out the purse containing Ethem’s gold and threw it into the air for her to catch. ‘But we can leave whenever we choose.’ I was amused by her delighted response.

‘In that case we should go very soon.’ She was gravely urgent, it’s getting worse by the day in Constantinople. There are more and more murders. People of all kinds are disappearing. Not just girls. The Baroness told me for instance her friend Count Siniutkin has vanished. Swallowed by the Earth, she said.’

‘You’ve seen the Baroness? That’s good.’

Esmé paused while she concentrated on chopping the cocaine crystals. She nodded. She studied the white lines with unusual intensity.

‘Is she well?’

‘I think so.’ Her tone was offhand.

‘And Kitty?’

‘Yes, she’s well.’ This almost in a whisper.

‘You’ve been playing together?’

‘Not recently.’

‘I’ll see her for a few minutes later on. As soon as we’ve had something to eat.’

Esmé handed me the ornamental mirror with the exactly-made lines of cocaine on it. She was as usual extremely neat in this respect. I look the silver tube and placed it to my right nostril, sniffing hard. It was wonderful to be reunited with my drug in this way. At once I felt a fresh surge of enthusiasm and pleasure. The food was delivered, but we ate only a little. Esmé wanted to make love.

It was almost midnight by the time I climbed the staff staircase of the Hotel de Byzance to tap softly on the Baroness’s door. She opened it immediately, but was startled when she saw me. She did not look well. Her face was drawn, her skin coarser than usual. There were bags under her eyes. Her hair was brushed back, ready for bed. ‘Are you alone?’ I whispered. Kitty normally slept on the couch by the window. I made to enter, but Leda blocked me. She was beginning to sway. ‘Are you ill? Surely you haven’t caught typhus?’ My own guess was that she felt faint with the profound emotion of finding me alive. ‘Did you think I was hurt, Leda?’

I was amazed by her reply. ‘I had prayed that you were.’ She spoke in a violent, almost hysterical whisper. She made a dismissive motion with her hand. I could see over her shoulder into the room. Kitty was turning in her mother’s bed. I thought Leda did not want the child disturbed. ‘I tried to send a telegram, but I was a prisoner.’ Even as I spoke I felt my tone was overly apologetic. ‘Shall I see you tomorrow?’

She said in a small but far clearer voice, ‘I shall send you a letter.’

A little puzzled, I nonetheless made to kiss her on the cheek, whereupon she pulled back hastily, glaring. The whisper was vicious steel now. ‘They warned me you were a monster of deceit, but I would not believe them. I have never even heard of any action so vile!’

I was flabbergasted. ‘Has Count Siniutkin been speaking to you? If so, I must warn you he has already tricked me -’

‘I have not seen Count Siniutkin. He may have been arrested by the Turks.’ She was closing the door. ‘Please leave me alone. I do not wish to lose self-control over someone as worthless as you.’

‘Leda!’ I insisted on remaining. She came out into the passage now, wearing, the blue silk kimono I had bought her in the Grand Bazaar. ‘You look beautiful,’ I said. She pulled the door shut behind her. She had grown impressively red. I had never seen such fury in a woman. She hissed: ‘Maxim Arturovitch, I wish never to see you again. I did not intend to warn you of this, but I am seriously of a mind to inform the authorities against you. Even in this degenerate city there must still be left some decent people. That you deceived me so horribly, that you encouraged Kitty to play with your child-whore, is bad enough, but to have seduced the creature in the first place - and under my nose - to have invented such a despicable fantasy - is unforgivable!’

I was enlightened at last and my heart sank. I heard myself responding feebly, ‘I did not seduce her. She was a whore when I found her. I rescued her. You contradict yourself, Leda!’

‘And you manipulated Kitty and me into becoming part of that horrible pantomime of family life! What took place in your disgusting dreams? What did you plan for us?’

This was too near my true fantasies. I backed away. What I regarded as joyous and beautiful, this demented, puritanical, jealous Fury was determined to depict in the worst possible light.

‘I hoped at very least you had paid a high price for your infamy.’ She was advancing towards me now. I retreated as far as I could before I was stopped by the bannister, ‘I thought you still worthy of suicide. I hoped you had been tortured and murdered. I was relishing the prospect of the police finding your body in the Bosphorus and asking me to identify it. I intended to refuse, or tell them it was not your body, to make sure you were put in a communal grave with all the other scum of this filthy city. But here you are, a nightmare come true. You kissed me with lips that had touched her. You confirm people’s worst prejudices against you. I have not dared ask Kitty what went on between you when I was absent! That poor, innocent girl!’

‘I love Kitty like a father.’ I was whispering too, now. ‘Leda, you must realise I meant no harm. I did it for you. How did you find out?’

‘Hasn’t your little whore told you? She was convinced you had been killed. You had become a drug to her. She didn’t know what would happen to her. She had drunk too much when she found me. I said I would help her home. That was how I discovered your horrible love-nest. You were living with her in our special hotel! Oh, how you must have laughed at me! You’re not a human being. You’re the vilest of devils. It all came out, bit by bit, that night. She at least was repentant. But you - you show no remorse at all! Merely anguish at my discovering the truth, to the frustration of your plans. You are a discredit to your race!’

‘The appearance is far worse than the actuality.’ I spoke as calmly as I could. ‘It is all the result of a series of accidents.’

‘You have put my daughter at risk. You deny you’ve been making carnal love to a child no older than Kitty? That you betrayed all my finest feelings, cynically used my love and my best sentiments for your own perverse ends! How can you lie, even now? Oh, how I prayed your death was slow and painful!’

‘This is extremely unfortunate. Be assured, Leda Nicolayevna, my feelings, too, were of the finest. My darling, I am a father to Esmé, as I am to Kitty. My emotions are platonic, I swear. Anything else she told you is a child’s misunderstanding or a wild fantasy of her own invention.’

‘Maxim Arturovitch, you prove yourself still more despicable with every utterance. I have seen your clothes! Your bed! Your notes to her!’

‘It is not, however, what you think. You have condemned me hastily. I believe you will regret that.’ After my dreadful ordeal, I could stand no more. I drew myself up. ‘I shall not argue with you on this public landing. I intend to leave. If, when your senses are restored, you wish to speak to me, I would ask you to be good enough to send a note first.’ I raised my hat. ‘Adieu, Leda Nicolayevna.’

I believe the woman went so far as to spit at me while, with an appearance of calm, I descended her stairs. It is never pleasant to see a lady of good breeding driven to the manners and language of the gutter.

Considerably glad to be removed from the harridan’s nonsensical accusations, I returned to the relative tranquillity of my suite at Tokatlian’s where I found a frightened, guilty Esmé. She knew she had done wrong, but how could I be angry? Still dazed by my encounter, I sat down in my chair, stroking Esmé’s weeping head and trying very hard to make sense of my thoughts, for fresh plans were urgently required. The prospect of the Baroness out of malice reporting me to the authorities was alarming. I could probably prove I was not the one to have had initial carnal knowledge of the child. I hoped she might admit she had known at least one man before me. I could insist I was merely her guardian, that I had saved her from sin, but the scandal would certainly hinder me in obtaining a visa for England. I became decidedly anxious as the time went on. I did not sleep that night while I considered my few options. It seemed the whole world again conspired against me. Must I be punished simply because I had given my being in all generosity to two women, had in fact made both happy? I had anticipated the dangers of arousing the Baroness’s jealousy. Now I was proven wise in my judgment. She pretended to be a woman of the world, but I had always known better. If she acted in haste, she could cause me immense inconvenience. My liberty could be at stake. There was no threat of mine which might silence her, no offer she would not in her present mood reject. I knew deep despair. Beside me in the bed, little Esmé, the cause of all this, snored gently in girlish slumber.

In spite of my desolation I forced myself next morning to hurry directly to the British Embassy. I somehow managed to drive my way through the crowd outside and from sheer panic was able to reach the front hall. I had been of great help to the British. They had been able to arrest a master spy on my information. I had a wife in England. I had served with the Australians. All this was explained to those soft-faced boy-policemen who backed my path. Yelling over the imploring din outside, I outlined my predicament: I had been involved in valuable espionage in Anatolia. I had more names to link with Siniutkin. But now my life was in danger. I was carrying plans, I said, of great importance to the British Government. By the time I stopped, my brown suit was drenched with sweat and impassively they told me to submit my request in writing. I began to demand to see someone in greater authority. It was at this stage that one of the soldiers said I should piss off back to whatever rathole I came from. Now I was not only insulted by officials, but was being set upon from behind by desperate Russians and foreigners close to hysteria. In their efforts to secure some privilege they made revolting beasts of themselves. There was nothing for it but to go down to the docks and look for my Armenian friends. I was seeking a person whom I had already met. They directed me to a certain grubby coffee house near the Quarantine Harbour.

After I had trudged up and down hundreds of alley steps, passed under scores of lines bowed with threadbare washing, avoided the droppings of dogs, donkeys and Turks, I eventually reached a shop in the half-basement below a great tottering wreck of wood and brick which had once been painted green. In French its faded lettering boasted housing Alfasian’s Famous Tropical Bird Emporium. From within, the occasional squawk or mutter of a parakeet echoed in an emptiness suggesting Alfasian’s was not a thriving concern. The broken planks of the steps down to the coffee house were slippery and rotten. In my haste, I almost fell into the basement area. The interior was packed with Armenians and Albanians smoking their long meerschaums and staring up at me from dreamy, suddenly cautious eyes. At the oilcloth-covered counter I asked for Captain Kazakian. A large, thickset man wearing a filthy American navy cap rose in the shadow of a cubicle and motioned with his cigarette. I recognised him and went to join him at his table. ‘You’re the Greek who fixed my boat so well,’ he said in Russian. ‘Well, friend, what can I do for you?’

I told him I remembered his mentioning how he frequently took tourists back and forth to Venice; that he would sometimes carry the odd passenger who perhaps did not have all his proper documents for entering Italy. Noncommitally, he nodded. ‘You have a friend in trouble, Mr Papanatki?’

‘Myself and my sister. We must leave at once. When do you next plan to sail?’

He sighed. ‘The competition has been terrible this season. And before that was the damned War. The bigger people are taking all the tourist trade from me. I’ll only be able to return from Venice with, say, half-a-dozen passengers. They will scarcely pay for the running costs.’ He looked miserably at me. ‘Therefore, it would have to cost, for the two together, a hundred.’ By the figure he meant gold. I had that in sovereigns. ‘You can take our trunks and so on?’ I asked him. ‘Of course,’ he made a generous gesture with his hand. ‘Trunks. Suitcases. Cats and dogs. No extra charge.’ He laughed as he saw my relief. ‘I’m not short of space on board. At the moment I’m half empty.’ We agreed where we should meet and what procedure I should follow. It was to be at the ‘Little Quay’ near the Tephane Docks. I left the coffee house beginning to feel I had accomplished the most important part of my escape. The streets stank of damp and decomposing spices. I was oddly intoxicated by the time I reached my next destination, a grog shop near the Tower, behind which my Bulgarian forger had his office. Another fifty pounds bought me crude exit visas as well as reasonably made British passports for myself and Esmé. The documents would be of no use for entering England itself, but would prove helpful in countries less familiar with the originals. I gave my name as Cornelius and supplied him with the necessary particulars, including photographs which I had prepared some time before. While I waited he made up the passports, peering through a gigantic magnifying glass as, in the light of a naphtha lamp and muttering admiringly at his own handiwork, he bent over an old, chemical-stained mahogany table.

By the time I returned it was late afternoon. Esmé, evidently miserable, was utterly dishevelled. She was even more frightened than when I had left her. The Baroness had called quite early. Finding me gone, she had left a note. Esmé’s hand shook violently as she presented me with the envelope. Putting on a brave face, I comforted her. Everything was ready and all she was required to do was pack whatever she wished to take. At this, Esmé burst into floods of tears and the whole scene emerged. ‘She said I would be arrested. My parents will be arrested. You they will shoot!’

Although privately furious with the woman for her cowardly terrorising of an innocent girl, I contained myself and merely shrugged. ‘She’s insane. Jealous.’ I opened the note. It proved without doubt her unstable mind. She wrote that she could have jumped too early to conclusions. She had thought over what I had said last night. Now she believed I had been led astray ‘by a little Turkish harlot’. Esmé was probably connected to the gang which had kidnapped me. If I got rid of the child at once it would probably save me and the Baroness would consider forgiving me, perhaps even go with me to Berlin, so simultaneously avoiding scandal and retribution. I must meet her in the restaurant at ten that evening when we could discuss what had to be done. I found this volte-face baffling, but decided it would do no harm to see her once more. By placating her for twenty-four hours I should certainly be able to make my escape without trouble from the authorities. I showed Esmé the note. She could not read the Russian. ‘It’s blackmail, of course. But I’ll go to see her and buy us time.’

Esmé had made an effort to calm herself. ‘What shall I be doing, Maxim?’

‘As I said, you must get our things into trunks and cases. Tomorrow a car will pick us up. It’s all arranged.’ I hugged her. ‘You mustn’t worry. Be a brave little monkey. We are on our way to Venice. You’ve always wanted to go. From there we can reach Paris, if we like. And England. You’ll be quite safe, my darling. Those countries are truly civilised. Not like Turkey.’

She was by no means convinced. Now our escape offered to become a reality, I think she grew nervous. She had known only Constantinople. In one way or another she could survive here. How would she fare abroad? I appreciated her anxieties. I had originally felt much the same about leaving Odessa, ‘It will be all right. We’ll be happy.’ I tried to cheer her up.

‘The Baroness has friends in those countries.’ She remained wary. ‘They will arrest us, Maxim.’

‘She has no power. That’s nonsense. Only here is she a little troublesome. She thinks she has more to threaten me with than is true. Someone like that is never much of a problem. We’ll be travelling as Maxim and Esmé Cornelius, British subjects. She won’t know that.’

Again, Esmé attempted to pull herself together, though her mind was clearly not at ease. I laughed and kissed her. ‘Within a week we shall be strolling down the Champs Elysée together. You’ll have a new Parisian dress.’

She said, ‘Perhaps it would be better to go to Athens first. Or Alexandria?’

This amused me. ‘You really are a child of the ancient world. Is it so hard for you to relinquish it? We must think in terms of London and New York, my little one. You mustn’t be afraid. I shall always protect you.’

She shook her pretty head, again close to tears. ‘You have already been captured once. If it were to happen in Venice . . .’

‘It cannot happen in Venice. These are genuinely civilised countries. You can’t know what that means yet, but you must have faith in me.’

I spent the rest of the evening calming her. Eventually she began carefully to take clothes out of cupboards and drawers and inspect them, like a sensible little Hausfrau. Then slowly she folded her silk dresses. Just before ten I kissed her and was off downstairs to keep the appointment with my volatile Baroness.

Tokatlian’s was impossibly crowded. The uniforms of a dozen nations squeezed together at the tables, frequently sandwiching soft, naked shoulders. As usual the band played its hideous jazz while waiters were scarcely able to push through the mass to find their customers. Arabs in burnooses and Turks in fezzes, Albanians in sheepskin, Montenegrans in felt, Circassians in leather, argued together and sang together or separately collapsed in corners. Russians in magnificent Tsarist uniforms, all of them looking the image of the late Emperor, picked their way from place to place, looking for friends, asking after lost relatives, producing rings, necklaces, small ikons from their pockets to sell to haughty Levantines. These aristocrats had learned to beg. For generations their ancestors, disdaining all forms of commerce, had looked down on influential financiers and great merchants. Now, reduced to the level of bazaar boys, they carried their pathetic goods wherever they went, unable even to afford the rent of a market cubicle. At first, in the dim light, I did not see the Baroness who was already seated at a window table. Then a tram went by outside and its glaring lights revealed her. She was wearing her best red and black dress and what remained of her jewellery. Her back was unnaturally stiff, a sign of deep nervousness. She saw me and waved. When I eventually reached her and sat down I noted how heavily painted she was. She had been weeping. ‘You should not cry,’ I said. ‘Your fears clouded your mind. You made hasty decisions.’

‘I don’t think I missed the essentials,’ she said firmly. ‘You must not lie to me any more, Maxim. If we are to save you, you’ll have to swear from now on to tell me the whole truth.’

I sat back, making a display of offended pride. ‘My dear Leda, I do not intend to be questioned by anyone about my decisions! I should have thought my word would do. I have had my fill of interrogation during these last days!’

‘But you must tell me the truth.’ She was emphatic. ‘Do you swear?’

I inclined my head, ‘If you like. Very well, I swear.’

‘I need to know exactly what hold she has over you. You’re so utterly impressionable. She could lead you into any trap, you know. Are you afraid of her?’

‘Of course not.’

‘You said you would tell me the truth.’

Reluctantly, I was forced to say what she wanted to hear. Frequently that is what people are actually demanding. ‘I am a little scared,’ I admitted. ‘She has relatives in Constantinople. They might be criminals.’

‘She hinted at some of this. Doubtless they in turn have contacts with the Turkish rebels. Did they threaten to expose you?’

She knew nothing of Siniutkin’s part in my kidnapping. I thought it best not to confuse her. ‘I went to meet the Count in Scutari.’ The waiter came over so I dropped my voice. Leda ordered us a light meal. ‘When I got there I was bundled into a car. Next thing, I was being driven inland!’

‘And you still did not suspect her?’

‘At the time, it did not even occur to me.’

Leda now wore an expression which was new to me, a mixture of moral urgency and depravity suggesting I was right to believe her mad. Thus, I became willing, more than ever, to humour her. ‘Then that was how they knew where to find me,’ I said wonderingly.

‘Exactly! She’s a second-rate juvenile Mata Hari. She’s probably been working as an agent for years. She pretends to innocent vulnerability. It’s her best disguise. I’ll admit she hoodwinked me at first. But when I saw last night how shocked you were, I put two and two together.’

I was not convinced the Baroness completely believed this rationale herself. But a Russian who finds a rationale is, as we say, already well on the way to action. She could now explain everything within the context of my having been deceived. She had named an appropriate villain. Since Leda did not want to part from me, Esmé must become the monster which, only yesterday, I had been.

‘I shall have to be careful,’ I murmured, ‘if I am to escape from her.’

‘You must go immediately to the British. They will want to know about the rebels. I doubt they trust the Sultan for accurate information. And half the present government are Young Turks already favouring the Nationalists. Still others are in French and Italian pay. I have all this on good authority. You should get down to the harbour tomorrow, see if the Rio Cruz has left, or when she is due back. Captain Monier-Williams will put you in touch with the right people.’

Leda had forgotten our ship had been on her last voyage in these waters. The Rio Cruz was gone for good. But again I said nothing. The poor creature was half crazy, largely I suspect from lack of sleep and cocaine withdrawal, since I had not been supplying her. The Baroness frowned to herself. She had eaten hardly any of her food. ‘Did Mrs Cornelius know what was going on with that girl?’ She seemed to have a list of questions already prepared in her head.

‘A little. She, too, tried to warn me.’

The Baroness uttered a superior sigh. ‘Oh, Simka. You’re only a boy. You’ve been led astray so terribly. How could you allow her to do it?’

‘She reminds me of Esmé Loukianoff, the girl I was due to marry.’

From her beaded handbag Leda took a scented handkerchief and placed the tip of it against her eyes. ‘You are too romantic for your own good, my dear. But look where it has led you. She asked for your “protection” I suppose, wanted to be introduced to influential people?’

‘She had nothing, you see.’

‘Nothing!’ The Baroness laughed. ‘She probably earns more than the Sultan himself, selling our secrets to her masters in Ankara. That was why she tried to trick me, when she thought you trapped and gone for good. She needed to get to Count Siniutkin. She might even have succeeded. The poor man has disappeared completely.’

‘So I gather.’ Mention of the Count’s name made me turn suddenly, as if he might be standing behind me. Instead, near the bar, deep in conversation with a French officer, I observed the slight, dapper figure of Bimbashi Hakir. The Turk stared distantly back at me for a moment, then resumed talking. I became genuinely anxious, realising that not all the gang had been rounded up. They would know who had accused them and were bound to be vengeful, ‘It doesn’t feel safe here,’ I told Leda. ‘Let’s go to my little apartment for a while. We can say more where there’s less chance of being overheard.’

Without hesitation, she agreed. I paid our bill and we inched our way clear of the restaurant into the relatively cool air of the Grande Rue. A procession of closed horsedrawn carriages was going by. It filled the street. On both sides of it were Turkish soldiers in ceremonial dress. This mysterious caravan disappeared down near the Galata Tower and, as if they had been held by an invisible dam, the ordinary trams, donkey carts, motor cars and horses suddenly flooded back. The glare of gas and electricity, the wailing, horrible music, the lurid signs and the constant whining of beggars made me feel suddenly nostalgic. I could understand Esmé’s reluctance to leave this city of her upbringing. I should have been glad to stay here at my own convenience and was determined to return one day, when the Turks were gone and Greeks or Russians ruled. A restored Orthodox Church would bring pilgrims from all over the world. But would the new order diminish Constantinople’s oriental excitement?

As the Baroness and I turned up towards the little cemetery, a couple of pistol shots sounded close behind us. I heard a police whistle. They were the normal sounds of the Pera night and neither of us ever paid them much attention, but I had responded rather more nervously than usual. I found I was glancing into doorways. In one, Major Hakir’s fierce little face peered down the sights of a revolver. Elsewhere I saw bazhi-bazouks jumping from alleys. There was potential danger on all sides. The night was humid, but the sweat on the back of my neck was cold. I was unusually glad to get up to the apartment. Here Leda virtually threw me onto the couch with the violence of her sudden, greedy passion, ‘I love you,’ she declared. ‘I could not bear to see you hurt, Simka.’

As we undressed, I decided this was a reasonable price to pay for my twenty-four hours of grace. What if, I wondered, I acted out the role she had prepared, would she again have changed her tune? The problems of living in this city had overtaxed her mind. It was fortunate for me that I had found this out before offering her the opportunity of travelling with Esmé and myself. She might have threatened far worse harm had she decided to denounce me in a Western country. With rather less enthusiasm than usual I gave her my body, explaining away my obvious uninterest with the claim that I had become fearful of Esmé and her Nationalist friends. Tokatlian’s was evidently a hotbed of revolutionaries, ruthless adventurers and desperate men and women of all kinds. I could not stay there any longer. I would move, I said, to this apartment. Then I would inform the authorities of our suspicions about Esmé.

‘But how will you stop her realising?’

For my own amusement, I let the Baroness discuss a variety of notions involving the betrayal of my darling. If I had been a cynical man, I might have thought the whole female race treacherous and without conscience. So many women spoke of morality only to maintain their own position when it suited them, to gain power, or, as in this case, to threaten. In Constantinople everyone scrambled to get tiny pinches of power for themselves, and consequently everything was for sale. The women, the slaves, the subject races, all schemed and squabbled in the shadow of the Sultan’s palace. A few years earlier, Abdul Hamid, last true Emperor of the Osmanlis, possessed unlimited power, yet carried a pistol with him at all times. If someone disturbed, displeased or frightened him, he frequently shot them with impunity. Millions of souls had been at his disposal. Such absolute tyranny makes its subjects greedy for mastery over some small aspect of the world, whether it be animal or child. Thus Constantinople was a city famous for its dogs. People with the least power keep the most dogs.

That night when I returned to Esmé, I had been shocked by the levels of duplicity a woman was capable of reaching in her jealous desire to hold a man. Equally I was somewhat admiring of her, even though she began to cut a ludicrous figure of a person whose deceits and subterfuges are transparent and therefore harmless. I found Esmé almost catatonic. There were clothes tumbled everywhere and nothing packed. She sat in the middle of a pile of frocks looking pale and frightened. Her pretty hair was tangled, her eyes red. ‘I do not know what to do,’ she said. She was paralysed by the prospect of leaving. Patiently I began to fold the cloaks and dresses and put them down in the trunks. She watched me helplessly as if I were abandoning her.

‘I’m not sure it’s wise to go,’ she said.

I explained the Baroness intended to expose her as a spy. I laughed about it. ‘We’ll be gone before she can do anything.’

At this Esmé began silently to weep again. I almost lost my temper. She was behaving like a whimsical child. ‘After tomorrow,’ I promised, ‘you’ll be Esmé Cornelius. They’ll be searching for a Roumanian girl called Bolascu. Even your parents won’t know where to find you.’

‘But they must! We have to send them money.’

‘I have already made the arrangements. They’ll get even more from now on.’ I was prepared to say or do anything to reassure her.

‘Can I see them before we go?’

I hesitated. I could not risk being again separated from Esmé. ‘Very well. We’ll visit them tomorrow morning.’

‘I would rather go alone.’

‘It’s too dangerous.’

She appeared to accept this and raised enough energy to help me do a little of the packing. By the small hours we were ready to leave at a moment’s notice. We slept until eight, then prepared to visit her parents’ tenement. It was a clear, misty morning. Constantinople shone with those wonderful, faded pastels for which she is famous. There was a cheerful mood to the streets. We carried two suitcases of clothes Esmé had discarded. She wished to take them to her mother. Though fearing we should run out of money before we ever reached Venice, I had agreed to give her parents another two sovereigns. The decrepit couple received us with their usual lack of emotion. Monsieur Bolascu had already bought himself a new suit which he had promptly ruined in some local gutter. Madame Bolascu was filleting a large fish at the table. Esmé kissed her. ‘We are going on holiday,’ she said in Turkish. ‘I wanted you to have these clothes.’ The woman nodded and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Suddenly she looked at me and grinned. It was shocking to see that stony face break into such unlikely mobility. The fangs were revealed, yellow and black, and a kind of birdlike gargle issued from the throat. ‘Bon voyage, m’sieu,’ she said. Esmé wanted to stay. She pretended to talk to her father, who now dozed in a corner and could not hear a word. She hugged her mother. Madame Bolascu patted her on the back while continuing to grin at me. ‘She is a good girl.’

‘She’s a very good girl. She’ll get an education in Paris.’

This the grotesque creature found even more amusing. I was evidently a wag. In French she told Esmé to enjoy herself. Life was short. She must not waste it. We made a very pretty couple. She must be sure to be obedient for she would find few gentlemen as kind as Monsieur. She added an afterthought in Turkish. Esmé nodded and bowed, sucked in her upper lip and became sentimentally animated for a moment. Then, passively, she put her arm into mine, just as if we were about to have our photograph taken, and we stood there stock still while the woman, without pausing in her skilful gutting of the fish, looked us up and down. The sun streamed into the room, onto the dusty, unpainted boards, the bloody, stinking table. The eyes of the fish winked like jewels.

On the way back we stopped to buy Esmé pistachio nuts and almond cakes. She was behaving as if I were taking her to prison. The vendor shrugged his shoulders, pretending to search for change, banging on his bin for his boy to come over, and I looked across at a little shaded square where plantains grew like huge fungus around a green copper fountain. There on a wooden bench sat a swarthy Turk. He wore a formal European suit and a fez. He was staring at me intently. I reached towards my hip. I had brought a revolver with me today. I should have been a fool to go unarmed with Count Siniutkin’s friends everywhere in the area. Since I had never fired one in my life, I doubt if I could have aimed the weapon accurately. I let the sweet-vendor keep his few pennies and hurried Esmé on. She looked up at me in alarm, I told her we were being followed.

Once back at Tokatlian’s she began to tremble alarmingly. She pleaded to be allowed to take the train. Every time she got on the ferryboat she felt sick. Was there no other way to leave Constantinople?

‘Oh, yes,’ I replied savagely, ‘there are several other ways. But one must be dead before they become available! Do you want to join the Brides of the Bosphorus?’ Only a few days earlier divers had been sent down by the British, searching for the wreck of a ship. They had reported finding a forest of bodies waving on the bottom, each of them tied in a sack and weighted with chains. These were chiefly girls who had ceased to please Abdul Hamid, but a few more bodies, similarly weighted, would scarcely have been noticed in that crowd.

Begging me not to raise my voice, she said I was scaring her all the more. I relented. I took her on my knee. I told her of the glories of Italy, the pleasures of France, the monumental certainties of Great Britain. ‘And these countries are all Christian,’ I said. ‘They are all Catholic. You will never have to risk persecution again. There is no one to threaten you or sell you into a harem or force you to work at Mrs Unal’s.’

She dried her tears, looking up with a half amused sniff. ‘It sounds boring.’

‘You are a bad, bad girl!’ I kissed her. ‘Your mother told you the truth. You’ll find few as kind as me. You must be obedient!’

This seemed to have an effect. She grew apparently much more cheerful and began to pack up her cosmetics (of which she had hundreds) putting the different little pots and jars carefully into their places in a vast wicker hamper I had bought her from Simsamian’s in the Grande Rue.

By the evening we were completely ready. I ran across to the Byzance where the Baroness was at her reception desk, ‘It’s all arranged,’ I said. ‘I’ll meet a British Intelligence Officer tonight.’

She was full of triumph. ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘I’m to go alone.’

‘When shall I see you?’

‘In your room, late tonight or tomorrow morning.’

As I left she blew me an excited, conspiratorial kiss, that inexpert Lady Macbeth. I winked back.

Not knowing if there was to be a curfew I had ordered the car for immediately after twilight. Two hired Albanians carried our trunks down to the waiting Mercedes while Esmé, pale and hesitant, dressed inappropriately in a short silk teagown and fur-trimmed winter overcoat, stood with her hands in her ermine muff. She also wore one of her largest and gaudiest hats. At least, I thought with relief, she looked twice her age. I carried my own plan-case. In it lay my future and my fortune. The car was hardly able to squeeze through the little cobbled alley, yet had already been surrounded by a score of street Arabs, some of whom were evidently not native to the city, but spoke fluent, trilling Russian. I was becoming used to the sight of this new breed of blond-haired mendicants. Even as Esmé bowed her over-weighted head to get into the car I looked across the alley, thinking I saw the movement of a potential assassin. But it was only a little Turkish girl of about six. She had been relieving herself in the doorway and was concentrating on straightening her clothing. She looked up with a smile of recognition, as if hearing a familiar voice, then she saw me and her expression changed to one of alarm. She began silently to weep.

I joined Esmé in the car. It could be a few hours before we left for Venice, but I thought it prudent to be on our way. The chauffeur started the car, scattering the children in all directions. As we turned into the Grande Rue I looked back. We were not being followed. Pulling down the blinds of the car I noticed that beside me on the big leather seat Esmé had begun to shiver. I worried in case she was actually ill. She seemed to have a slight temperature. As soon as we arrived in Venice, I promised myself, I would get her a good doctor, even if it took our last penny.

By the time we reached the Little Quay and made the car stop as close to the barrier as was sensible, my girl had turned decidedly pale. I patted her hand while the driver at my request fetched her some sherbert from a nearby café. Behind the barrier the Customs people were still at their posts, but were beginning to pack up for the evening. They stood in relaxed groups, chatting and smoking, sharing jokes. Bored British and French military police wandered here and there, the reason for their presence mysterious even to them. The dark water was smeared with oil reflecting the light of naphtha lamps and gas-flares, and from a nearby bar came the flat slap of Turkish drums. A number of sailors approached, showing a passing interest in the limousine. I replaced the blinds. Esmé continued to shiver beside me, sipping her sherbert, her eyes on the neck of the impassive chauffeur in front. One of the sailors casually tested a door, but I had locked it. When I next looked out the bulk of several large ships blocked most of my view beyond the harbour. Esmé and I would have to pass between two large iron gates to get to the wharf. There was one guard on duty, an Italian, and he had been primed by Captain Kazakian not to look too closely at our papers. A while later I saw the lights of a launch flicker on a few yards out from the wharf. The Italian army guard put his rifle against the gate post and turned a key in a padlock. Within a few minutes a large horse-drawn charabanc appeared at the other end of the street. It moved like a hearse over the cobbled pavement, drawing up directly in front of the gates. These were Kazakian’s other passengers. Ostensibly in order to compete with larger shipping concerns, he was running a night service to Venice. It was time for us to leave the car. I told the driver to wait where he was until the luggage could be brought aboard and crossed the street with Esmé clinging to my arm. She virtually fainted as the Italian made a charade of inspecting our documents, stamping them and finally letting us through. When he spoke a few words of English to Esmé she did not understand him and looked utterly panic stricken. I hurried her towards the launch. By now my own stomach was churning. I had never known quite that sort of fear. I still half expected a motor car to roar out of the darkness at any moment and a tommy-gun to spray us with bullets. Such assassinations were then commonplace in Constantinople. Al Capone was by no means an innovator. I relaxed a little once we joined the line of passengers walking towards the launch. Her engines turning slowly, she had pulled in beside the wharf and lowered her gangplank. She was a nineteenth-century sidewheel paddlesteamer equipped with wooden benches under a rather tattered awning on her upper deck. Her lower deck had a few slightly more elaborate sleeping berths. She was capable of little more than three or four knots and scarcely seemed seaworthy. But she was a better boat than she looked. This, at least, I knew from my own work on her. Captain Kazakian was nowhere in evidence. As soon as we had boarded and taken our places on the upper deck I sought him out. Sitting against the wheel post on his bridge, he was eating sausage and drinking wine. He winked at me as I handed over the hundred sovereigns and became almost languorous at the feel of gold in his hands. Yawning, he looked up at the sky. ‘It should be a good trip, Mr Papandakis. This is the best time of year.’ I asked him to make sure our baggage was brought on board and cleared through Customs, ‘It is being done,’ he said. ‘I saw you arrive. Your trunks have been portioned out between fifteen of the other passengers!’ He laughed heartily. ‘Are you a gun-runner, using my poor boat as transport? Or do you own a dress-shop? Don’t worry, they won’t be checked. This is all a ritual. The Customs people don’t care who leaves. They only worry about who comes in. And everyone makes a decent profit this way.’

I heard a motor revving in the street, then whistles and revolver shots. Electric torches flashed in the alley. Someone shouted in Turkish. There was a shriek and the sound of running. ‘What was that?’

Kazakian dismissed it. ‘Someone who couldn’t find his fare to Venice, maybe. There.’ He straightened himself and pointed. ‘Your trunks are coming.’ To my relief I saw half a dozen Greek and Albanian sailors crossing the gangplank with our trunks on their backs. ‘Is there a chance we could take one of the cabins?’ I asked him. ‘My sister is unwell. Nothing catching.’ He was regretful. They had all been sold long since. But it was a warm time of year, a calm sea. I should enjoy the journey. It was easy to sleep on the benches.

I was more cheerful when I returned to Esmé. But she had sunk into her clothes and stared desperately back at the wharf. ‘I don’t think we should go,’ she whispered, ‘I have a premonition.’

I scoffed at her. ‘You’re upset at leaving, that’s all. You’ll feel better when we reach Venice.’

‘The ship makes me so sick.’ She got up. ‘Really, Maxim, I must get off!’

I restrained her, conscious of the curiosity of the other passengers, frightened lest we draw the attention of the police still on the quay. In panic, I hissed at her. ‘Sit down, you little fool!’

‘You’re bruising my arm.’ Her eyes came to angry life.

‘Then sit down!’

The launch was rocking. Very loudly the engines exploded to full throttle. Wind caught at the canopy. It flapped like an applauding seal. The paddles churned and spray hit us suddenly from the starboard side. I heard rods connecting, pistons turning. Almost losing her footing, Esmé cried out, half falling heavily onto the bench. The other passengers, muffled in coats, were noisy and cheerful, pointing out exotic aspects of Stamboul’s rich skyline. Her palaces and mosques had turned to pale grey against the blue-black night. I forced Esmé to sit where she was. She began to struggle, to moan. She was hysterical. While the other people on deck turned to admire the massive outline of the Suleiman Mosque coming up on our port, I gathered my strength and dealt my child a controlled but powerful blow to the jaw. Instantly she collapsed in my arms and started to breathe deeply like a tired dog. We pulled clear of the wharves. By the time we entered the Sea of Marmara the steam launch was vibrating dramatically. A few night gulls squawked curiously overhead, a variety of inhuman voices called from the harbours and the dark, surrounding water. Hidden ships hooted and shrilled. The air grew thick with the heavy, heated perfumes of Byzantium; with brine, with a hint of sweet fruits, palm trees and exotic gardens; the stink of the stirring beast that was Asia.

More shots and explosions sounded from the Pera side of the Galata Bridge: a rising cacophony of police whistles and sirens. Motor horns hooted. There was a confusion of shouts that rose and fell only once. The launch rattled like a cheap mechanical toy as she adjusted her course for the Hellespont. I believe I probably saved Esmé’s life, as well as mine, by silencing her. If she had begun to scream we could well have been arrested.

The boat’s vibrations were now less violent and water was a reassuring rush in the paddle blades. The shore fell away from us on all sides as we headed for Gallipoli and the narrow straits for which so many men of the British Empire had died in vain. Beyond Gallipoli lay the Aegean, that most hallowed of seas, where civilisation had been born, where the philosophy of Christ was created. From the Aegean grew the Mediterranean and Italy, from which Law and Justice were carved out of the Chaos of pagan barbarism. I was sorry Esmé was not awake to share my joy. The boat grumbled and clanked. She wheezed and squealed, but I did not care. I knew that Odysseus was going home!

Esmé stirred once or twice, then fell into a deep, natural slumber. Only later, when we were actually in the Hellespont and the water was growing choppier, did she wake up. I was dozing myself by then. I heard her gagging and spluttering and hardly realised what was happening before I recognised the smell and felt dampness on my chest. She had vomited all over me. This was one of the few things she had in common with Mrs Cornelius. I accepted the discomfort as fitting revenge for the blow, cleaned myself as best I could, then, putting her head back on my shoulder, stroked her to sleep. It seemed my destiny to fall in love with women who had weak stomachs. The sounds and scents of the sea altered subtly as we slipped into the Aegean, passing close to Lemnos and its big Russian refugee camp. With a certain amount of malice I thought that sooner or later the Baroness and Kitty must arrive here. It would be a shame if the child suffered, but Leda deserved a short spell in such conditions. Only then, I thought, would she come to realise from what I had saved her, how much she had lost because of her hysterical folly and her unreasonable jealousy. I had been more than careful to consider her feelings. Now she, in my absence, could consider mine!

By midmorning of the following day it became apparent that Captain Kazakian was not the mariner he had claimed to be. By the afternoon it was also obvious neither he nor his boat was fitted for the voyage. The paddlesteamer was mechanically sound, in the sense that most of her parts functioned properly but she was hardly a seagoing boat at all, being more suitable for ferrying work on inland waters. I caught the captain twice puzzling over maps and staring through an old telescope at the coast. We had never gone out of sight of shore. The launch now stank of burning oil and several times I had awakened from my doze in alarm, thinking we were on fire.

I did everything I could to keep my knowledge and my fears from the almost comatose Esmé. Mostly she lay full length on the bench, very occasionally taking faltering steps to make dry, retching noises over the rail. She had eaten nothing since Constantinople. For that I was selfishly grateful, though increasingly I was concerned about her. I could not believe anyone would react so badly to mere anxiety. Sometimes she looked up at me to ask in a tiny voice if we had arrived yet. I was forced to shake my head. All I could reply was ‘Soon.’ Then I would go to the wheelhouse and discover the bulky Armenian struggling with charts, frowning at instruments and scratching his head with the peak of his filthy cap. His reply to my question was usually a grunt and always the unreassuring information that we were ‘not far from Greece’. I admit my own geography had also been at fault, for I had believed Captain Kazakian when he said Venice was little more than a day’s voyage. At length, when I forced a more specific answer from him, he admitted our position was ‘somewhere near Smyrna’, which was almost the last place I wished to be. He tried to ease my mind by pointing at his obviously malfunctioning compass. ‘But we are on our way to Mykonos.’ He explained Mykonos was Greek; an island ‘not far from Athens’. By that evening, as the sun went down below a mysterious range of bleak cliffs and while Kazakian muttered in tempo with his engine, still puzzling over his sea-maps, Esmé was asleep and I was starving. It had not occurred to me to bring food.

Later, one of the passengers offered me a piece of thin sausage and some pitta which I gratefully accepted. He was more outgoing, more confident than most of the others (who now seemed like fellow refugees rather than tourists); a big man in a black overcoat and black astrakhan hat. He introduced himself as Mr Kiatos and was reassuringly content with the progress of the voyage. He had travelled on the launch several times, he said. She always managed to survive the trip in one piece. He was a businessman, dealing mainly in dried fruits, and he had cousins in Constantinople. He lived at Rythemo, he said. A regular steamer never took this route. If he travelled by more conventional means he would have to transfer boats once or twice and thus lose a great deal of time. I asked him where Rythemo was. It was on Crete. Captain Kazakian, I said, had given me the impression we were going straight to Venice. At this Mr Kiatos smiled without rancour in the folds of his smooth, well tempered face. ‘I think the Captain goes wherever we pay him to go, sir. And he tells each passenger he is sailing direct to that place!’ He chewed with pleasure on his sausage, returning his attention to the placid surface of the sea, while I stretched out on one of the empty benches and managed to sleep.

I was awakened by the night’s chill. We were moving slowly beneath a magnificent yellow moon. To our port the craggy cliffs ran with foam. The sea was still relatively calm but I could hear breakers rushing on a beach. The lights of our launch swung back and forth and human silhouettes stood leaning against the rails. Esmé was sitting upright, clinging with outstretched arms to the back of the bench, like a crucified doll. I asked if she were better. She wanted some water. I went below to where their tongueless Bulgarian cook sat playing cards with one of the other unwholesome-looking crewmen. I signed to him. I needed water from the barrel. He made an expansive, hospitable gesture. Cleaning out a mug, I carried it back for Esmé, who swallowed, spluttered, then asked if we were sinking. I pretended to laugh. ‘They’re putting a passenger ashore, that’s all. A minor delay. It won’t be much longer before we’re in Venice.’

She rolled her eyes upwards like some Godforsaken martyr, then again subsided into sleep. She seemed feverish so I dabbed the rest of the water on her forehead. I noticed my own hand was shaking. I forced myself to be calmer.

With a good deal of yelling and cursing from Captain Kazakian, his men brought the launch closer to shore. They started to unship one of the boats. A large Gladstone bag at his feet, Mr Kiatos stood over me, wanting to shake hands. I had become so abstracted, I had not at first noticed him. ‘This is where I leave you, sir.’ He smiled with sympathetic humour. ‘I hope it isn’t too long before you arrive in Venice.’ He bent down and placed the rest of his food and a little packet of dried figs on the bench beside me.

I watched him clamber gracefully over the side, then came to my senses enough to move to the rail. A seaman rowed him through choppy water towards the beach. I waved at him, but he did not see me. For a moment I wondered why they had not docked at the town’s wharf. Then it occurred to me we were probably closer to Mr Kiatos’s home and Kazakian was avoiding port fees. It might also be that Mr Kiatos was a smuggler.

By morning the boat was shaking and squealing across a calm sea beneath pure blue skies and I was trying to get Esmé to take some crumbled biscuits and milk, which an Italian woman had given me. The land was almost out of sight and Captain Kazakian therefore was making frantic efforts to get closer in to what he guessed might be Hydra. He was inclined to panic if, even for a few minutes, the horizon consisted only of ocean. For my part I had sunk into that peculiar stupor which over the years has helped me stand many kinds of boredom and several sorts of terror. I sat with Esmé’s poor little burning head in my lap, staring forward, watching for clouds and praying a storm did not come. By now I was perfectly convinced the launch could not possibly ride anything more than a squall. Captain Kazakian’s need for reassurance no longer seemed unreasonable. Further passengers were put off, usually in obscure coves of nameless islands. Sometimes a person would object, claiming he did not recognise the coastline or that it was not the exact place to which he had paid passage. At this, Captain Kazakian would shrug. He would argue. He would stab his filthy stubs of fingers at the charts. He would offer to take them on to his next port of call or carry them back to Constantinople. Then eventually, resentful and suspicious, they would disembark. It had, of course, become absolutely clear we should not be sailing into Venice via the Grand Canal. We should be lucky if he landed us on a stretch of pebbles less than ten miles from the city. Not that this likelihood disturbed me very much, since it was important to avoid the authorities if at all possible. I was actually comforted by the knowledge that almost every other person on board was also anxious to remain inconspicuous. Now no embarrassment existed between us; nonetheless very few fellow passengers attempted to communicate. It seemed we shared a similar reaction to our plight. Nothing we could say would improve our situation; so we said nothing.

The worst problem I could imagine for Esmé and myself, as we got a little closer to Italy, was the transporting of our trunks to the city. There would not be porters at one of Captain Kazakian’s landing stages. I refused to voice my fears to my little girl, whose (ever subsided after I had managed to get her to take some cocaine. The drug’s restorative properties rarely failed and in this case helped to bring her to her senses. I could now force her to nibble on Mr Kiatos’s figs and sausage. We were sustaining ourselves entirely on borrowed food. Without the silent kindness of those other people we might have starved to death. Kazakian and his crew had certain supplies, but had no intention of sharing them with what they plainly regarded as a troublesome cargo. They would have treated cattle better.

By the next afternoon Esmé had recovered still further. She looked fragile; her eyes had a bleak, wounded quality, but she was better able to move and to talk.

‘Where are we now, Maxim?’

‘Nearing Venice,’ I said.

The sky had a few strands of cloud but was otherwise perfect; the sea might have been an ornamental lake. The engine steadily turned the paddlewheels which, with light glinting on their green metal covers, sent refreshing spray into our faces. The gods, it seemed, were favouring this Odyssey, at least for the moment. I sat with my darling beneath the stained canopy and held her hand, murmuring of half-remembered Greek legends, the glamours and treasures of the Venetians, the engineering marvels we should find in Europe. Meanwhile Captain Kazakian came up onto this deck and, with a nod to us, stretched himself full length on the planking beyond the awning. Stripped to the waist and smoking a cheroot, he was enjoying the sun. Occasionally he would turn his massive head towards us and call out encouragement. ‘Everything’s under control. Just a few more hours.’ They were meaningless words. He was relaxing because he had actually recognised the coast of Cephalonia and had recently passed a number of large ships. Every time Captain Kazakian had seen one of these he had given a cheerful greeting on his whistle. The nearer we were to land, the more vessels there were in the immediate vicinity, the happier he was. We had flown the Turkish flag when we left Constantinople but were now carrying Greek colours. That evening, just after dark, we let off three passengers and took several more on board.

The newcomers were all middle-aged men walking with that swaggering gait I identified with well-to-do bandits or comfortably corrupt police officers. Until dawn, they remained standing around the wheelhouse, chatting to the Captain and later to the bosun who relieved him. They offered no recognition of the other passengers and never looked at anyone else directly; they were of the type for whom eye-contact is a weapon, a means of threat or persuasion. They did not waste it on casual socialising. Eventually a small sailing vessel drew alongside and took them in the direction of Corfu (according to Kazakian, who seemed greatly relieved when they had left). He reassured me we would be in Venice ‘tomorrow’. He nodded at me, as if I were a mute baby. ‘Yes,’ he said smiling. ‘Yes.’

By noon the next day the engine suddenly stopped. I at first assumed we were making another rendezvous. The boat drifted under a copper sky, away from the hazy outline of land to starboard. Esmé lay in my lap breathing deeply and the world was filled with an enormous silence. I was enjoying the sensation until, from the wheelhouse, Captain Kazakian began to yell fiercely in all the languages of the Levant and Mediterranean.

I saw the engineer come running along the deck. He was waving his arms and screaming. I sat upright. Thick black smoke gouted from the little engine-room and drifted towards us. It was menacing. Like a sentient, supernatural creature which might devour us if we moved.

A few moments later Kazakian left his post and with one eye on the cloud, as if he shared my impression of it, walked slowly up to where we stood. He was grinning and shaking his head, his hands going through their entire vocabulary of gestures, a sure sign of his utter terror. ‘I thank God you are with us, Mr Papadakis, for you are the only one who can help us with our problem. You are a genius of a mechanic. Everyone in Galata says so. I know it.’ This litany of praise was merely a preliminary and I suffered through it, waiting for him to reach his point.

‘Will you please look at our engine?’ he said.

Esmé had become frightened again. In spite of the sun’s warmth, she pulled her coat about her and withdrew to the bench.

Reluctantly I followed Kazakian into the tiny engine-room, having taken the precaution of placing a handkerchief over my mouth and nostrils. I staggered before what was almost a tangible wall of heat. I gave instructions to shut everything down and tried to look for the trouble. The engine was typical of its kind, of no specific manufacture and operated by people who treated it with more superstition than mechanical skill, repaired so many times that scarcely an original part remained. I had become used to understanding the individual logic which went into these pieces of machinery; one had to guess the quirks of another’s mind. There was no manual which would have been of the slightest possible use to me. After a while it emerged there was a blockage in one of the pistons. I set about dismantling the whole primitive system, having them clean each part as we went. The launch was burning any fuel she could find and the engine was patched with rags, bits of metal, even the remains of a corned beef can, while the boiler was a nightmare of welded scrap iron. Carefully I reassembled everything and gave orders to make steam again. To my enormous relief she ran more smoothly than before. I had not looked forward to being some minor Daedalus to that seedy Minos.

Delighted, Captain Kazakian insisted we go to his cabin. It was little more than a cubbyhole behind the wheelhouse and smelled worse than any other part of the boat. He wanted to drink some arak. But by now I was firm. First, I told him, I must see if my sister was all right. It was growing dark. I found her shivering on the bench where I had left her. I was worn out and inclined to greater anxiety. I was determined to get us to Venice before anything else went wrong with the boat. I returned to Kazakian’s cabin. I thought Esmé had typhus, I said. This impressed him. He looked grotesquely startled, as if he suspected himself of giving her the disease. Then he insisted vigorously that she was merely seasick. I had lost patience with him.

‘You had better understand, I think, that it is not only possible to lift a curse placed on an engine. I can also make a curse. Without moving from here, I could immobilise you completely.’

He sneered at me but I had obviously impressed him. My guess was that he was too superstitious to risk very much. Also I had proved so useful to him he was willing to placate me. He called his bosun in and gave orders that Esmé be taken below to one of the recently-vacated cabins. ‘At no extra charge,’ he told me with the air of a man who knew he was being stupidly generous. The stuffy cabin had a bed with a single dirty sheet on it, but it was better than the bench. Lifting her fragile little body onto the bunk, I made the others leave; then I undressed her and washed her. She awoke for this and did not resist me, showing no interest when I told her the engine was working well and we were on the last lap of our journey. ‘We should be sighting the Italian coast tomorrow. I have taken charge here.’

As soon as we landed, I said, I would find her a doctor. She became calmer as the night progressed. Her fever had dropped radically by morning. I left her alone long enough to demand a cup of coffee from the boat’s galley and remind Captain Kazakian of my threat. He flapped his hands and shrugged, ‘It is where we are going!’ he said, as if I were an unreasonable and demanding child. ‘Where we are going. Of course!’

I stayed with Esmé until evening, keeping myself awake with cocaine. At about nine o’clock there was a knock on the door and Captain Kazakian entered. He was smiling broadly. His attitude was completely changed. This suggested he was now more certain of his position. ‘Tonight,’ he said. ‘Yes. Actually tonight. In Venice. Will your sister be well enough to go ashore?’

‘Where will you land us?’

‘Not far from Venice. A village. You can get a train. A matter of half an hour.’

‘I am almost out of money, Captain Kazakian. I can’t afford any further travelling expenses. You promised to take me all the way to Venice, remember?’

He scratched the back of his neck and became embarrassed, placing the tips of his Angers into the pocket of his greasy, embroidered waistcoast. After some hesitation he produced three sovereigns. ‘I will give you these back. Your fee for helping us with the engine. They will pay your fare to Venice.’

It was a mixture of peace offering and sacrifice to the gods; a reluctant libation to the little spirit who watched over steam launches. I accepted his gold. It was my right.

‘My men will take you to this village,’ he said expansively. ‘You’ll find a good doctor there. The Italians are excellent doctors. They have many of them.’ He looked with shifty alarm at Esmé’s tiny, pale face. ‘You’re sure it’s typhus?’

‘We shall ask the doctor.’

At about three in the morning the Turks and Albanians began to unload our trunks and bags into a boat until it sat so low in the water I thought it must sink. I followed with Esmé in the other boat. The sea grew more boisterous as we rowed towards land. Captain Kazakian stood outside his wheelhouse watching us impassively. He did not wave. The ship carried no lights but the moon was full. We had little difficulty reaching the beach and dragging both boats above the waterline. I was so delighted to be ashore I felt I had to suppress a cheer. The night was warm. I could smell fresh-mown grass and trees and hear insects calling. Somewhere, far away, a donkey brayed.

One of the Turks left us suddenly. He set off up the beach at a run, disappearing behind the dunes. Unconcerned, the others unloaded and stacked our trunks. They were pleased with their work. I smiled at them in thanks. With a few words of farewell they refloated their boat. They rowed back to the launch which we could just make out near the tip of the headland. She looked incongruous in these waters, as if she had lost her moorings at a holiday resort.

Eventually the Turk who had run off returned. He seemed proud of himself. Everything was being done as if they were new to it. Was Kazakian again playing things by ear? With the Turk was a tiny old man in a black jacket and trousers, a dirty collarless shirt and bare feet. The old man seemed bemused, but cheerful enough. ‘Buon giorno, signore, signora.’ He nodded with hesitant politeness.

I almost embraced the poor man. I was close to tears. For a little while I had suspected Captain Kazakian of putting us off on some convenient Greek island, but now I knew this was Italy! We were safe. Nearer now, a donkey brayed again. The old man turned and clucked into the darkness.

The Turkish seamen and the venerable Italian carried our luggage up the beach. Eventually I followed, supporting a tottering Esmé. We reached a narrow track and there stood a little cart, the donkey between its shafts. The cart had nets in it and a sack evidently containing fish. The old man moved the sack to the seat and began loading the trunks. When he had finished there was only room for Esmé on the board in front. We helped her up. She seemed to respond well to the little fellow’s murmuring voice. There is nothing more soothing to the nerves than the sound of soft, kindly Italian. The old man and myself stood together, watching the Turk return to his boat and shove off into the deeper darkness. Then, giving the donkey a sharp tap on its flanks, the old man led it up the track. I walked beside him.

He spoke nothing but his own language of which I knew only a few words. I told him I was grateful for his help and hoped we were not inconveniencing him. He did not understand but smiled and said: ‘Son contento che Lei sia venuto.’ As if in reassurance.

I pointed ahead to where I could see a few lighted windows, wondering if perhaps we were closer to our destination than the Captain had told me. ‘Venezia?’ I asked.

He seemed surprised, but shrugged. I repeated myself a couple of times and he frowned. ‘Si. Venezia?’ He added several sentences which I could not understand. Then I said: ’Dottore?’

He was agreeable to this. ‘Dottore? Si, si. Dottore!’ He motioned with his stick towards the lights.

‘In Venetia?’ I asked him.

This caused an unexpected reaction. He stopped in his tracks, looked up at me, waved his arms and began to cackle uncontrollably, bending over in his mirth. ‘Ah! Ah! Venezia! Ah!’

He became almost inarticulate with merriment as he tried to point towards the lights again. ‘No! La capisco! La città!’ He pointed with his stick as soon as he regained control of himself. ‘Otranto,’ he said.

I had never heard of Otranto and found the old man’s response to my mistake excessively humorous. The place was far smaller than I had hoped, with some winding streets, a ruined castle and several taverns. When we reached it a faint line of light had appeared over the horizon and an early cock was crowing from a red rooftop. Old and dusty, the town might have been Greek, judging by the Byzantine appearance of its main church, but from the look of its castle could also be Moorish. It was not what I had expected to find in Italy, this clearly defined mixture of architectural styles. It was almost as if Otranto had been invented by someone wishing to describe the national and historical influences of the past twenty centuries. Yet the whole was in fact not incongruous. I found it attractive. I would have thought it wonderful if I were not so disappointed at not finding Venice. It was, in fact, a small town, and could not have supported more than two thousand inhabitants.

We soon had a room, however, in a little medieval inn where a thin, cheerful woman took care of Esmé. I paid the old man with some of the silver left in my pockets. He seemed delighted. He and the landlord attended to our trunks. There were so many they half filled the tiny, low-ceilinged room. By the time they left, Esmé was in bed, enjoying the luxury of freshly laundered linen and I had gone downstairs to breakfast with the couple who addressed me in friendly, eager voices and made no sense to me at all. In the end we merely smiled and made various signs of goodwill. I returned to the room where Esmé now slept peacefully, her sweet face as pure as an angel’s, and drew the curtains. I undressed, got into bed, took my girl into my arms and did not wake up until afternoon.

To me Otranto seemed a haven of tranquillity. I could have stayed much longer and even today have an urge to return. Then, however, I was anxious to get to a large city, where we should be unnoticed in the cosmopolitan throng. Esmé was still sleeping. I washed in cold water, dressed and went to seek the landlord and his wife. I found them on a bench together at the back of the inn. They were plucking chickens. When they saw me they called out. I could still understand nothing of their Italian but enquired again about a doctor, explaining with gestures and a few Latin words that my sister was sick. The skinny wife was the first to understand. She babbled at her husband who carefully set aside his chicken and rose to leave. The heads of the dead birds stared at me in ghastly amusement as if they saw something about me which others did not. To the wife I asked the distance to Venice. She shrugged and said ‘Treno?’ which I took to mean ‘train’. I nodded. I did not mind how I got there. Kazakian had said it would take half an hour, but I did not trust him. The woman uttered another string of sentences in which the names Roma, Napoli, Brindisi, Foggia and half a dozen more were mentioned. It was then it began to come clear to me we might be much further from Venice than even I supposed. Captain Kazakian had been so anxious to get us off his boat that I suppose we were lucky to be in Italy at all. It seemed it would cost at least the three sovereigns he had given me back just to get to Venice. I wished that it were possible for me to lay a curse on his engine. As it was, I closed my eyes and tried to visualise the machinery. There was certainly no harm in trying.

When the gangling doctor arrived, seeming far too young for the fringe of beard around his face, I was relieved to discover he spoke French. Dr Castaggagli informed me Esmé had nothing more worrying than neurotic tension which would almost certainly disappear with rest. ‘Have you been travelling for long?’ He was aquiline and prematurely bald. He reminded me of a Jesuit eagle. I told him she had never left home before. Our trip had been rather tiring. He nodded. ‘She needs to be somewhere peaceful,’ he said. If possible I should engage a professional nurse. He frowned to himself, adding, ‘But not here.’

I was delighted she had nothing seriously wrong. I offered Castaggagli one of my remaining sovereigns. He refused the coin with some amusement. He was a country doctor, not used to large fees. If I had no small sums, he would take payment in kind. So, since he was about the same across the shoulders as me, I gave him one of my overcoats. It had a good fur trim and was rather too warm for the climate, moreover it would have to be lengthened in the arms, but he was delighted. He offered to let me have a hat and scarf as ‘change’. I said that I would rather have a timetable of the trains from Otranto. He smiled. He would do what he could. It would probably be best if I went to the station myself. He asked where I would go. I told him.

He shook his head at this. He thought Venice might be an unhealthy place for a sick child, even though there was nothing seriously wrong. It was smelly in Venice and extremely noisy at this time of year. However, he would make some enquiries about the best connections. Probably it would mean a change in Foggia, at least.

To forestall his curiosity (and possibly his reporting us to the local carabinieri) I told him I was English. My sister and I were on our way to Corfu by steamer from Genoa when Esmé became ill. At my insistence the captain had put us off here. Perhaps there was a large city closer to Otranto than Venice?

Doctor Castaggagli said it would be far easier to head for Rome or Naples, particularly with all our luggage, and presuming us to be returning to London. He did not think Esmé should travel for several days or for very far. She must be installed in a good hotel room where she could have tranquillity and rest. Then she would soon recover. If I needed a specialist opinion (which he admitted was unlikely) I should certainly make for Rome where it was ‘very modern’.

Although regretting I should not see the beauties of that famous old city, I was already thinking it would be better to travel to Rome and thence to Paris. From Paris I could obtain legitimate papers and then proceed to London. I still had enough to pay our fares and a few more weeks at moderately priced hotels. Even if our money ran out we were in a law-abiding country. I could earn what we needed.

In Paris, if he had not yet gone to America I would find Kolya. He would help me. And there would be other friends: St Petersburg alive again on the banks of the Seine! In a mounting mood of optimism I made my decision. In spite of the doctor’s advice, I was certain that familiar comforts, streets, traffic, crowded cafés, would revive Esmé more thoroughly than any rural retreat. However, I thanked Doctor Castaggagli warmly; I knew that he meant well. He asked if he could be of further help. I needed to change money and buy tickets. He took me in his pony and trap to the town’s bank and there my sovereigns became lira: huge, magnificent, flamboyant notes. Next we went to his house. He insisted I wait in the trap while he dashed inside to return with the promised hat and scarf. They were both of good quality and, in spite of having several suits, coats and other accessories (though the bulk of our luggage was Esmé’s) I was grateful to him. At the little station, which looked as if it had been in Otranto since the time of Christ, I bought two first-class tickets for Rome.

The doctor insisted upon purchasing a bottle of wine, to enjoy a farewell drink. Reassuring myself that Esmé still rested and was content, I joined him in the courtyard of the little inn. We sat down together. The old marble bench might have come originally from a Roman villa. In the little garden beyond the courtyard the landlord’s wife clipped her evening roses. Doctor Castaggagli stretched his long legs out before him, his heels describing cryptograms in the dusty earth whenever he shifted position, and spoke of his love for this little town, his birthplace. In some ways I was envious of him. Over the years I have longed so for simplicity: the one gift God refused to grant me. However I enjoyed a certain contentment that evening, looking up at the crenellated Moorish castle and its monument to slaughtered victims of the Turks. The Osmanlis had raided Otranto in 1480, killing everyone they could find. I was reassured. No longer need I fear immediate threat from Islam, Israel or, indeed, Bolshevism. I was securely on Western European soil, and everywhere saw confirmation of progress; a civilisation I had always yearned to know. Here, such things were taken as casually as the weather, as the ubiquitous old monuments to an enduring history.

My own past thoroughly behind me, I felt I had entered the future. I was, amongst these ancient hills and vineyards, truly about to take part in the twentieth-century adventure. For this civilisation was not decadent as was Turkey’s. It had continued to grow; it marched confidently on, paying decent respect to the past but never yearning for its return. I felt a distinct contrast between this world and the crumbling monuments of Islam, the noisy, stinking, degenerate streets of Pera, whose denizens clung desperately to scraps of wreckage so rotten they turned to dust almost at once. Italy herself was reviving, as she always revived! She was a new, flourishing nation, ecstatically welcoming, as perhaps nowhere else, the Age of the Machine! Her greatest hero was her finest symbol: the poet/aviator d’Annunzio! Here was a figure one could unconditionally admire. Magnificent in his manly dignity he showed the Bolshevik demagogues up for the petty, unwholesome creatures they were. D’Annunzio had taken up the sword in his nation’s cause. He had refused to allow the Mapmakers and financiers their shallow compromises. Personally, he had marched at the head of his soldiers into Fiume, claiming the city in the name of Italy. The city was Italy’s by every honourable right; it had been promised her, as Constantinople had been promised to the Tsar. Oh, for another ten d’Annunzios to take the conquered cities, the betrayed cities, the noble, forgotten cities of the world and give them back to Christ!

Doctor Castaggagli talked a great deal of d’Annunzio, whom he admired, and it was the inspiration I needed at that moment. ‘He epitomises the new Renaissance. He is a man of science, yet a great poet; a nobleman who embraces the future. He is a man of action.’

Here was someone with whom I could thoroughly identify. I saw much of myself in d’Annunzio. One day I intended to meet him. Together we could do so much. As the simple country doctor said, there was a Renaissance about to dawn all over the West. Greece was flourishing. France was restoring herself. England was extending the Reign of Law. And Germany, too, must soon recover from the trauma of defeat, putting an end to the sickness of socialism which currently infected her wounded body politic. America was resting, yet she would rally, I knew. A great brotherhood of Christian nations would emerge, united in its common purpose, to drive the Bolshevik wolf to its death and send the Islamic jackal scurrying into the desert from whence it had come. A little drunk on the rough young wine, I spoke of these dreams to my Italian friend. He toasted me enthusiastically and spoke of his country’s renewed friendship with mine (which he thought was England). He had a dream: the future would show us a world balanced between two Great Empires, the British and the Roman, each mutually admiring, each complementary, each with its own distinct character.

‘It will exemplify the Renaissance ideal,’ he told me. ‘The ideal of Harmony and Moderation. Science will flourish in all forms, but it will be humane, tempered by the wisdom of the Church.’

As if to confirm this statement, there came a high-pitched drone from above. The sun was setting bloody and huge behind Otranto’s castle, and out of it flew the distinctive silhouette of an SVA5 biplane. It lifted its nose above the fortress battlements and then, turning lazily to circle the red tiles of the old town, began to bank down towards a dark green line which was the sea. It was seemingly swallowed back into a magical realm where the ordinary rules of nature did not apply, flying as easily through water as it had through air. Then it disappeared.

Drunkenly, the doctor and I applauded it. We toasted d’Annunzio once more. We toasted Otranto. After some debate, we rose to our feet and toasted the Pope.

Later it occurred to me the plane was probably a Customs spotter, hunting out illegal shipping. I wondered if it had seen Captain Kazakian’s steam launch off the nearby coast and was searching for smugglers or secret immigrants. As soon as we could we should be on our way to Rome. (I learned soon afterwards I had been far luckier than I realised. Italian coastal patrols had been doubled in recent months. There was an influx of stateless refugees desperately fleeing the ruined countries of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor.)

That night I told Esmé we were going to Rome, to the seat of her religion, to a city older than Byzantium. The wholesome food and the innkeeper’s wife’s loving attention had restored her considerably. My news made her almost gay. She began to apologise for her behaviour. I told her how I understood. It is a terrible thing to be torn up by the roots, even if those roots are buried in poisoned soil.

Soon afterwards we took the train to Rome. A little group of our Otranto friends saw us on our way. The journey proved extremely comfortable, if mainly dull. It was good, however, to know the luxury of true first-class travel again. The seats and the general appearance of the train impressed Esmé. She grew animated; her wonderful, girlish self; her eyes as bright as ever by the time our final train pulled in to great Central Station.

It was Sunday, July 4th 1920. Esmé and I had arrived at last in Rome, that city of lush gardens and timeworn stone; that city of the automobile where every second citizen seemed a priest or a policeman and where, consequently, Church and State were neither remote nor frightening institutions but familiar, ordinary and reassuring. A helpful cab driver recommended the Hotel Ambrosiana at 14, Vicolo dei Serpenti. We took a suite there. Warm sunlight poured through the French doors leading to our own little balcony. Esmé danced with pleasure. She was rapidly putting even a hint of her old terrors behind her, becoming ebullient, eager to go onto the streets, to visit the cafés, the shops. ‘And there must be circuses,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard of them. Cabarets, too. And the cinema, of course!’

It was a wonderful new world. It smelled free in a way Galata never had. Esmé marvelled at the straightness of the streets, their cleanliness, the relative absence of dogs and beggars. This, she said, was very much as she had thought of Heaven, when she was younger. And she had identified Rome, of course, with Heaven.

I asked her what she wanted to do most urgently. She skipped beside me, her hand in mine, her eyes smiling up at me.

‘Oh, the cinema!’ she said. ‘It has to be the cinema!’

After a light lunch at a pleasant little café near the Barberini Palace we went to look for a picture-house. We rushed straight in to the first one we found. They were showing Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii and we were entranced, almost overwhelmed by the film’s epic reality. There could have been no better choice, no better place to watch it. Esmé hugged me and held my hand all the way through. Occasionally, in her delight, she would kiss me. I could not imagine happiness more perfect.

My rebirth was consolidated at last.