The Laughter of Carthage

TWELVE

I ATTAINED MY majority on the day snow fell heavily to smother the shed of my Rose of Kiev and I received at last a letter from Mrs Cornelius. She had re-occupied her old house in Sidney Street, Whitechapel. I would not believe how good it was to be in Blighty. She continued to do everything she could to help me come there. What was more Major Nye had promised to look into my case. He now had a permanent position at the War Office. Between them, she was sure, they could get me to England by spring at the latest. In the meantime ‘good old London’ was ‘holding up nicely’ and she was ‘pleased as Punch’ to be back. She had been to lots of shows. She herself now had a job on stage again, though it was only the chorus, with a chance of a better part later, if she played her cards right. I was delighted she had been able to resume her career and while there was no immediate need for me to visit London, I saw little point in her discontinuing her efforts. I sent her one of my clippings as proof I, too, was ‘getting on’ in the world. ‘Soon,’ I wrote, ‘I shall be able to offer you an engagement entertaining passengers aboard my first aerial liner’.

The black shed, a mountainous square slab rising from the pure snow, was empty of people that day. I had ridden in my new 3½-litre Hotchkiss Tourer out to St-Denis mainly to have the driver show it off to Esmé. She thought it the most beautiful car she had ever seen. I suspected, tolerantly, she was chiefly impressed because its blue paintwork matched her eyes. Wrapped in white ermine, her breath like fine powder, she was almost invisible. As usual, I wore my bearskin overcoat, with the Cossack pistols, which I identified as my luck pieces, still in the pockets. Christmas and the New Year had been a heady progress from party to party. We had met everyone then fashionable in Paris, including the strange negress Janet Baker, whose mannish hauteur seemed so perverse to me. I was surprised when she went on to star in Opera, though I suppose a form lending itself so readily to extravagance and grandiosity readily accepts any new sensation. We became great friends with M. Delimier, one of France’s leading ministers, a private shareholder in the Company and an enthusiast for a French government commercial airship line. He was interested in my origins. He said he had a number of good friends in the Russian community. At the same party I met the pseudo-intellectual Communist Jew Léon Blum, who led France so decisively to her doom in the 1930s. In those days it became impossible to avoid Jews in any sphere, be it business, the arts, or politics. They were busy cultivating scapegoats and dupes to blame if their schemes went wrong.

My birthday drive through the snow to St-Denis remains one of my clearest memories of that time. Everything was perfect. I had acceptance, fame, fulfilment and friends. Few young men have celebrated their twenty-first year with such achievements. Straight, bare trees, like saluting soldiers, marched on either side of the avenue; clouds of dark birds cried their applause; a few flakes of snow fell from the branches and hissed on the pulsing bonnet of my car; Esmé clung close to me as the driver operated the controls. Children sprang from doorways of cottages to wave their caps and yell their enthusiasm; church bells sang and even the sheep lifted their heads to bleat a huzzah as we went by. I raised my respectable hat to a family group in a gig drawn by a pair of prancing greys; I reached and squeezed my horn as a peasant and his family made their way across the road from field to field. I shouted with delight, pointing into the steel sky at a flight of geese rising above the great shed and climbing until they disappeared. ‘An omen!’ I told the driver to stop the car and made Esmé get out. The watchman on duty at the gate knew me. He let us through as we tramped across the crisp snow to the shed, entering by a small door set into the main one. The skylights were frosted and magical. Ice had formed in the chilly blue air so struts and scaffolding gleamed like silver. ‘It’s fairyland!’ She advanced into pale light. There was rime in her furs; little stars.

‘It’s fairyland come true.’ The smell of the frost was so good to me. As I spoke snow stirred the echoes. ‘Wait until we’re flying above the clouds together, you and I, sipping cocktails, listening to an orchestra, on our way to America.’

‘You must invite Douglas Fairbanks to make the maiden flight.’ She was directly beneath the massive hull. ‘He’d love the adventure!’

I said I would write to him that very evening.

On the way home Esmé complained the snow was blinding her. She had a dreadful headache. By the afternoon she was in bed, unable to visit the de Grion’s that evening. She insisted I must remain in their good graces and go alone. I left her, sipping tea, with an ice pack on her head, a tiny, touching figure amongst the lace and linen of our bed. I felt I was failing her. Perhaps the transition from the Galata slums to Parisian high society had been too sudden? She frequently became self-conscious in the company of older, more sophisticated people who of course assumed she was from their class. She would be at a loss for words, though all praised her shy charm. As my sister she was courted by handsome young men. I did not blame them for their attentions. I was in no way upset. Esmé’s childlike attachment to me was never in question. I had already made it clear I was content to let her accept their invitations to drive in the park or even to have lunch, though I warned her their intentions would not always be honourable. She should guard against those who invited her to music halls or private suppers. She trustingly accepted my advice without objection. I knew so much more of the world, she said, than did she. In such matters I was her infallible guide, a true brother to her. Sometimes it seemed she had accepted the whole deception as truth. Often she would call me ‘brother’ in private. When we made love, which was rare enough for a whole variety of reasons at that time, she said it gave the occasion a delicious tinge of wickedness, of incest. She remained my fresh, beautiful, unspoiled rose, beyond any real vice; in spirit my virgin girl with the world before her. I myself was at last an adult, so I knew there was plenty of time for her to grow. There was no need for haste. Her girlhood should be enjoyed while she had it. My own youth had been stolen from me by War and Revolution. I envied those who could experience the careless days of adolescence. If I had children I would ensure their absolute security, a long and well planned education. Nothing is gained by early exposure to the world. I felt as if I had a full lifetime behind me, but not one I would wish upon anyone else.

Happily I could leave the Grion’s party early, with Kolya. We said we must discuss engineering problems. At Neuilly, after we had taken some of Kolya’s new cocaine supply, he asked after Esmé. If she continued with her bouts of illness he thought I should engage the specialist he recommended. ‘But possibly she simply suffers from the malaise du papillon.’ I wondered what on earth he meant by ‘the butterfly sickness’. He refused to elaborate, adding: ‘You should be prepared, Dimka, to let her go her own way soon.’

This seemed to me a revelation of unexpected jealousy on Kolya’s part. ‘She has everything she wants! Every freedom she requires. Anything else and she would have it. You know that, Kolya. She’s a child. I have a duty to protect her. Perhaps, when she, too, reaches twenty-one, I’ll marry her. That’s all I expect.’

Kolya was impressed, I think. He agreed there were certain comforts in marriage. He always spoke affectionately of his own wife. He loved her as thoroughly as I loved Esmé. But we were becoming too melancholy. He got up, putting on his clothes. ‘Come along, young Dimka, we’ll go to a decent party now.’

We drove in my Hotchkiss to a nightclub in the Rue Boissy d’Anglais, although it was already two in the morning. Here Kolya felt at ease. It was full of painters and poets. The garish green, red and purple murals were in the latest cubist styles. The music had a frenetic high-pitched neurotic, fitful quality, associated with the current Russian ballets. I was nervous of seeing Seryozha there, for the place seemed crowded with Russians from Kolya’s past; exorcised ghosts lending their sociopathic talents to the general chaos. Here men two-stepped openly with other men. Many women wore tailcoats and had their lascivious arms round young girls. All kissed, squeezed, stroked and touched as they danced. Kolya boldly ordered ‘C et C’ from the waiter and the mixture was brought at once: a magnum of champagne and a little test tube of cocaine. We were almost immediately surrounded by acquaintances, pressing in on our table from the semi-darkness. Some I knew quite well, from our nights at The Scarlet Tango and The Harlequin’s Retreat. They might have come straight from a Petersburg club to this Parisian version without even changing their eccentric clothes. They had seemed harmless enough in those old days, but politicians and gangsters hid amongst them. I assumed the same was true in Paris. Certainly some, who seemed mere clowns, would soon try to squeeze the throat of their protectress Mademoiselle Liberty.

From that unsettling den we went on to a private party where Mistinguett and half the artistes of the Casino de Paris were giving impromptu performances. I was enjoying a ridiculous song about going up in an aeroplane when soft hands fell on my arm. A well dressed man, dark-eyed and swarthy, smiled at me in uncertain recognition. To my surprise (for he seemed French) he addressed me in Russian. He was from Odessa, but was no one I had known well.

‘Stavisky,’ he said, shaking my hand. ‘We arranged a little business some years ago. You were a boy then. You haven’t changed.’ I now remembered him from a single meeting. Through my cousin Shura he had been the man buying cocaine off the Dutch dentist at whose surgery I eventually met Mrs Cornelius. Stavisky’s clothes had been more flamboyant in those days, the clothes of an Odessa dandy, though even then he was living in Paris.

‘You’re doing well for yourself, it seems.’ I was pleased to see him. He grinned. ‘I can’t complain. And you, too. This airship racket’s a winner, eh?’

Although I disliked him calling my project a racket, I had become used to Parisians’ dismissive slang so was not offended. We had a vodka and grenadine together, for old time’s sake. He hoped to see me around, he said. If I had any more patents, I must let him know. As he returned to his own table I asked if he knew anything of Shura. ‘I can tell you exactly where he is. Running a little operation down in Nice. I saw him a week ago. Shall I give him a message?’

‘Just that I’m in Paris. He can find me via the airship works at St-Denis.’

‘I’ll tell him.’ Stavisky winked. ‘You don’t want to pay these prices.’ He pointed at the remains of our cocaine. ‘Come to me next time. I give special rates to friends.’ He waved and disappeared into the jigging disturbance surrounding us. He was a good-hearted soul who would rise to eminence in the next few years, but was already marked as expendable to the conniving politicians who, Jews themselves, would brand him a Jew. They would have him shot down in a little shack in the Swiss mountains. In some ways, I suppose, I should feel grateful for the events which followed, although I did not welcome them at the time. If I had stayed in Paris longer, I, too, might have met Stavisky’s fate.

The original signs did not seem particularly disturbing. On January 30th there was a strike at the airship sheds. All engineers and fitters demanded higher wages. This was a blow, simply because I believed relations with our workmen excellent. We stood shoulder to shoulder in pursuit of a common ideal. Some Socialist agitator doubtless would be at the root of it. There was an emergency meeting of the Board. M. de Grion said we must certainly refuse all demands. Already these saboteurs were insidiously poisoning the roots of French society. It would not merely be against our immediate interest to capitulate, it would be against the interests of all decent people. Understanding his principle, I was nonetheless alarmed by its implications. Our schedule was threatened. We had promised to complete in a year. Our prospectus announced a maiden voyage in November 1921, a regular service by January 1922. To stop work now would be madness. We could not afford to break the rhythm of our progress. It would be more than just losing a week or two: there must be unity between designers and engineers at all levels. De Grion was sympathetic, but his argument won the day. Only Kolya and myself voted against a resolution refusing negotiations with the workers.

From that point I became the incredulous witness to a crazy, uncheckable avalanche. Within a month half our people had deserted to other jobs. It was impossible to proceed without a full team; the hiring and training of new personnel would take ages. M. de Grion remained unmoved. I told him his obstinacy threatened to ruin us. I saw my dreams collapsing once again, at the very moment I thought them most secure. Gradually stories began to appear in the more obscure newspapers. The Transatlantic Aerial Navigation Company was in trouble and seeking funding from the government. Shareholders had begun to sell their stock. By April there were even a few who spoke of suing. At least one scandal sheet described

Kolya and myself as ‘a pair of Russian charlatans bamboozling the French public with a fraudulent engineering scheme’. Increasing numbers of reporters would appear at my door, night and day, to demand if there was truth in these rumours. Was the Company on the edge of bankruptcy? I was frantic. I could not answer. I explained I was a scientist, not a financier. The scheme was solidly founded because my ship was the most advanced of its kind. Given the chance to complete it, I would show the world. I blamed the strikers for their short-sightedness. This was a red rag to the Bolshevik press, of course. They ran headlines indicting half the eminent business men of France (as well as ‘White Russian entrepreneurs’) as deliberately perpetrating a fraud. The Airship Company’s shares became worthless overnight. M. de Grion told me sadly he would have to resign from the Board. Only Kolya stood by me, attempting to persuade people to stay, for without them the Company would surely collapse. ‘Why throw away a goldmine when all that’s needed is a little more digging?’

They would not listen. I was disgusted with them.

At home, Esmé scarcely understood what I meant when I described this betrayal, our difficulties. Why must we consider moving again, giving up the car, dismissing the servants? I asked her to try to make sense of our household accounts. Earlier, to give her a feeling of purpose, I had put her in charge of our food and clothing purchases. She cried, saying it was beyond her. It was for me to decide what to do. I lost my temper. She should pull herself together. It was an emergency! I took my rage out on a child. I stormed from the house, walking up and down our street for half an hour until I was in control of myself. But when I returned she had gone. The servants said she had left in a car, that was all. I was not unduly worried.

Kolya and I dined together. He found the news upsetting but superficially was taking it better than I. He showed me a packet, received at the office that afternoon. He placed it in my hand. ‘What is it?’

‘Escape,’ he said, ‘If we need it. Luckily, I’d anticipated requiring these if we wanted to be on the Rose’s maiden flight.’

Opening the envelope I found a brand new French passport in my name, stamped with an entry visa for the United States, ‘It’s all quite above board.’ Kolya was reassuring. ‘M. Dalimier helped. Don’t you remember signing that form just before Christmas?’

I had signed so many. In general I was worrying about things bearing my signature, not knowing how many had made me personally responsible for the fate of our firm. I recalled nothing specific.

‘Well, we were all very busy then,’ he said.

‘And is there a passport for Esmé?’

‘She’s a minor. Unlike you she had nothing to prove her Russian nationality or, indeed, her identity. But her passport will come through soon, I’m sure.’

The new documents, placed in my breast pocket, seemed to protect my heart. ‘But how shall we keep the Company going, Kolya? Every other director has resigned. None any longer own stock, including your father-in-law. We’re the only major shareholders.’

‘Oh, indeed.’ With two pale fingers he pushed his plate away. He took a sip of claret, ‘It was cleverly done, eh? I wonder if they ever thought the ship would really get this far?’

I could not follow him and said so. He gave me a friendly, sardonic smile and sighed. ‘Dimka, I think you and I have been set up as the front to a stock swindle. Why else did nobody warn us? No tip to unload our shares. No suggestion we resign.’

‘But the whole disaster was the result of a strike,’ I pointed out. Kolya touched the back of my hand with his palm. ‘A strike, my darling, is easily arranged. Once arranged it can be maintained to the advantage of the management, rather than the workers.’

Still at a loss, I shrugged and shook my head. ‘The strikers were bribed?’

‘The Devil doesn’t always carry a red flag, Dimka. Sometimes he pays a proxy. Agitators can be bought, particularly if they’re professionals. Once tempers are high the working men hold their ground. Capital holds its ground, and someone makes a fortune from an airship which will never fly.’

‘But who? I have bills unpaid. No salary. Rent. Various debts. Servants. I’ve hardly a penny in real cash.’

‘Same here, little one. M. de Grion seems solid enough, doesn’t he? And his friends?’

‘He wouldn’t let you down, surely. He has the scandal to consider. His daughter would suffer.’

‘I’m quite certain if I seem seriously hurt by the Company’s crash it will actually look better for him. Later my wife will receive a present. I shall no longer have capital of my own. And all will be satisfactory again. For him, the situation’s ideal. He might have planned it in every detail. However, I think it was a solution. He’d hoped to get large government grants, other contracts. This is his way of writing off his losses.’

‘So only ordinary shareholders suffer.’

He looked hard into my eyes, as if telepathically trying to convey his message. ‘And you, dear Dimka. There are also outstanding Company bills. Wages unpaid to office staff and specialists. Engineering firms, raw materials, rent. It probably comes to at least a million.’

I was dizzy with shock. I could hardly speak, Surely, I asked, I was not personally responsible for every debt! Kolya gripped my arm. ‘But the scandal of bankruptcy will attach itself primarily to you. The yellow press is already blaming “foreigners”. They’ll have a perfect victim in you. A foreign swindler? Possibly a Bolshevik agent. The anti-Semites will have a field day, too.’

‘I’m not a Jew! Nor a Communist!’

‘How will you prove it?’ Kolya spoke persuasively. He was trying to bring the realities of my position home to me. I knew an investigation of my antecedents, traced back to Odessa if nowhere else, would provide proof to anyone determined to make me out a liar and a thief. Nonetheless I resolved to fight any such insinuation. It was in my interest, ultimately, to do so. ‘I know lawyers. I’ll prove my innocence, Kolya!’

Prince Petroff was unenthusiastic. ‘You’ll need money for that. I’ll help, but I have limited means now. Is there anyone who’d lend you a large sum?’

At this, suddenly I slumped. I had spent months avoiding the only person willing to give me money (and that at great cost to myself). I could think of no one else in the whole of Paris who would for a second go out of their way for me. I was once more in a weak position. In some ways weaker than ever before. The Cheka can sniff out weakness. My alarm came flooding back. I had sworn never to suffer prison again. The Bolsheviks had accused me as a swindler once, in Kiev, and now swindlers themselves threatened to send me to prison, accused as a Bolshevik! Yet my faith in the value of my airship persisted. It was a good design. A reality. That and the truth must surely save me! ‘The British have been investing in commercial aeroplane services. So have the Dutch. Couldn’t we appeal to them for funds?’

‘It’s politically impossible.’ Kolya spoke very quietly. ‘We need private money. And private money hates scandal.’

‘Most of the frame’s already built. We have firm costings for gas, fabric and engines. Quotations for the gondola are arriving now. It will work Kolya!’

My friend’s expression grew sadder. He had tears in his eyes. ‘My advice, Dimka, is to abandon any hope of completing her. Design another airship. Find a new backer abroad. Use that passport as soon as you can!’

‘Must I go to Constantinople?’

‘To America, of course. They have real money. They’re genuinely interested in new notions. Well, if it were my choice, I would head for New York.’

‘It’s impossible, Kolya. Esmé’s papers aren’t through.’

‘They’ll arrive any day. You can’t help her if they arrest you.’

‘I haven’t enough money for the fare.’

‘I could just about find you the price of a first-class passage.’ He was begging me, with every part of him, to save myself and I loved him all the more, but I remained confused. My life had seemed so secure, my prospects perfect, and now it was falling to pieces by the moment. ‘I must have time,’ I told him. ‘I can’t abandon Esmé. You know what she means to me.’

‘There’s no suggestion you abandon her, Dimka. She’ll follow almost immediately. I’ll make myself responsible for her. She can live at our house.’

I knew he was right. I should go before there were charges. Then, at least, I would not seem a wanted criminal. ‘Thank God I have one trustworthy friend. But suppose you, too, are indicted?’

‘I shan’t be. My family connections, my title, guarantees that. I’m afraid it’s you alone will directly suffer, Dimka. I can’t swear to it, but it looks almost as if they deliberately arranged for you to take the whole onus.’

How could ordinary people be capable of such complex perfidy? I had gone through so many dangers, risked so much, abandoned more to reach what I believed a safe, just and decently ordered world, only to be betrayed more subtly, more coldly, than ever I had been in Russia. France, the Mother of Modern Justice, was about to sacrifice me to satisfy the greed, guarantee the social standing of her great men. An idealist, a person of intellect is helpless against the forces of the Fifth Dimension, the Dimension of Secret Power. The ungodly delight to bring down the poets and the scientists; to lay them upon the altars of Gog-Magog and with bloody knives cut out their innocent hearts. The Fifth Dimension is the Land of Zion, a place beyond the ordinary limits of geography; a dark world of dark men and women determined to infiltrate and inhabit our own, to replace every one of us with a doppelgänger whose spirit once belonged to a dead Carthaginian. This is how Carthage conquers. Through money and human folly. Gone are the elephants and the bronze gongs, the clashing of bright metal and the cries of red-lipped bearded soldiers. Their slaves no longer drag themselves in chained convoys, bowed beneath the whip and the throbbing sun; instead they move from desk to desk in hygienic offices; they crawl up to coalfaces wearing modern safety lamps, they work as bunnygirls in gambling clubs, and most never have the dimmest understanding that they are owned, body and soul, by invisible creatures, powerful rulers of the Fifth Dimension. Zion is Carthage and Carthage shall not die. She adopts a thousand guises and her victims are the honest, the sane, the innocent and the holy. This war continues, but we are few. I can hear their laughter, distant and merciless, mocking and rapacious, echoing across the dissipating barrier dividing one dimension from the other. This laughter of Carthage gives me strength to resist. They cannot understand. They have beaten me with their rods. They have forced me to my knees. And yet I walk still. Im darf men keyn finger in moyl nit araynleygen! The armies of Turkey and Israel combine against me, but I shall continue to fight. My friends are few, but they are strong. I wish they had been with me in Paris, in those dreadful hours of my betrayal. But there will come a time for vengeance. We shall trample down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestow life.

On April 1st 1921 the city had begun to turn green and luminous. There were early blossoms appearing like blemishes upon the perfectly manicured body of the Luxembourg Gardens and citizens emerging from their winter cocoons walked with a livelier step. Pretty girls put on spring paint and glanced at my handsome car as I drove past but I barely noticed them. I was immersed in my anxieties. I had decided at last, as letters began to arrive from creditors and I was regularly abused by people on the street outside our deserted offices, that I could wait no longer. Either Brodmann and his Chekists would sense I was unprotected and strike, or the French Fraud Police would arrest me. Matters were worsening daily. There was no doubt I was to be sacrificed by de Grion and his high society friends so they could claim to have been duped by a foreign adventurer. Some of the newspaper stories in the conservative press undoubtedly had their source in de Grion. Kolya and I, together with most ordinary shareholders, were the only real dupes, but there was no way to prove it. Everything was on de Grion’s side: more than he knew, in my case. I read the reports: it was suggested I was a Bolshevik agent fraudulently gathering gold for Moscow, that I represented German Zionist interests, that I was a wanted criminal in Italy and Turkey. I knew enough about such campaigns to predict the outcome of this one. I was a perfect scapegoat, as Kolya had told me. I must forget any hope of continuing my fight in France. It would only mean imprisonment. I would go abroad and there clear my name. With my French passport I would have no great trouble getting to England, but I was still too close to the source of danger. Kolya, as always, gave me the best advice. I would spend some time in America, meet Esmé and Kolya there, then enter Britain later, when the publicity was forgotten.

As I drove home that afternoon I made up my mind to tell Esmé my intention of taking the ship from Cherbourg to New York. Kolya would keep her safe until she followed me. I had no choice. In America I would swiftly redeem my name. By the time she arrived I would be well on the way to re-establishing myself. The naïveté and optimism of Americans now looked attractive. Obviously they had money for new ideas. They had not yet realised how successful the War had been for them. They were now, for the first time in their history, a major international creditor, still with no notion of their enormous power in a world where almost every other nation faced bankruptcy. Once in the United States, my earlier press cuttings would prove my credibility. These were the interviews which chiefly mentioned my earlier successes in Kiev and Constantinople.

I arrived at the house to find it completely empty of people. A week before, the servants had left but now Esmé, too, was gone. Since the foundering of the company she had been frequently absent. She had been forced to find a social routine to relieve herself of boredom in my absence, now she used it to help her forget the terror of renewed poverty. I promised myself to make it up to her before I left. We should have a marvellous few days until I boarded the Mauretania, the liner I had chosen for my voyage. No longer the greatest ship afloat, she was rarely fully booked, but everyone said she had a pre-war elegance lacking in Cunard’s recent vessels with their emphasis on contemporary decor and pastel colours. At my desk, I wrote a letter to Mrs Cornelius. My last, describing my successes, had not been answered. Now I must tell her of my change of fortune. I would not be visiting England for some time. I had a visa permitting me six months in America and might even renew it if necessary. I would first stay in New York, then travel to Washington. There I intended to contact government officials and show them my patents. I wished her luck with her stage career. I suggested she might find the film medium suitable to her talents. I asked to be remembered to Major Nye.

Esmé was still not home by eight. I left her a note and went to see Kolya. He insisted on visiting the nightclub in the Rue Boissy d’Anglais and eating ‘hot dogs’ - ‘So you know what kind of food they serve in America and will not appear unsophisticated on arrival!’ He seemed in high spirits but was, I am sure, merely presenting a good front, to cheer me up. Leaving him was, in a different way, as painful as leaving Esmé. He said he would probably follow in a couple of months, as soon as the scandal died. For all he knew he would bring Esmé to me himself. I had only this hope. I was in danger of falling back ‘within the nightmare’, scarcely able to think clearly around emotional matters. I had no wish to leave my two dearest friends or to desert Europe. The United States seemed so far away. It might have lain beyond the edge of the world. But that was also its attraction.

At our little table under an archway smeared with bright yellow and crimson grotesques, Kolya and I watched a negro dance band play for ballet girls twisting themselves in parodies of classical movements. My friend had more information for me. ‘Stay at the Hotel Pennsylvania. Everyone insists it’s magnificent. It’s so modern an underground railway leads directly into the basements, just for the convenience of guests. I’ve made reservations for you through Cook’s. Your passport describes you as an engineer, so you’ll have no difficulty. Engineers are national heroes in America. Next time you come to Paris, you’ll be aboard your own air liner. Never fear, Dimka, you’ll prove the lie to the press!’

We drank to my success, but I remained fearful. In Russia I had been swept along by profound historical forces, but in France mere financial trickery had dictated my fate. (Yet the Shadow World of Carthage, the Fifth Dimension, exists on the fringes of our own, preparing to engulf us, and its modern weapon is money, the stock exchange. It lies in the East yet at the same time is everywhere, for it intersects our own dimensions on levels conventional science cannot as yet define.) That night, too, Kolya and I made our private farewells. Having given up the little place at Neuilly, we took a hotel room in Rue Bonaparte. It was a sweet goodbye and we both wept. We were fated to be together, just as Esmé and I were fated. His delicate features in the light from the street was the moon haunted, tragic face of a nineteenth-century pierrot. We were to meet again, of course, before I left for Cherbourg, but this was the true time of our parting.

I arrived home to find Esmé still dressed. Her hair was dishevelled. In her white and silver evening gown she resembled a frantic Christmas fairy fluttering about the empty rooms. She was drunk. She had returned, she said, to find me gone. Believing herself deserted she had taken a taxi to search the streets. I showed her my unopened note where I had left it for her. She looked wildly at it, shaking her head dumbly. For a moment her eyes had the flat glow of a puppet’s, without expression or consciousness, then she lowered her lids while at the same time shrinking into a chair, as if her entire body folded in on itself; as if her mind were being sucked into some unfathomable secret place. I became alarmed that I had caused this condition. When I tried to rouse her she shivered, looking up at me only once with an expression of terrified anticipation. I stepped back from her. ‘What’s happened?’

She could not move. Her lips closed, then remained partly open. Eventually I picked her up and carried her to the bedroom where I undressed her. She lay with the sheets to her chin, her eyes following me as I moved, preparing for bed. She made no response to my questions. I decided I was worrying too much. Drink and the late hour were responsible for her behaviour. I went to sleep, determined to tell her my plans in the morning.

At breakfast she was herself again, unusually bright, happy as a canary. She had arranged to lunch with her friend Agnes in the Champs Elysées. I did not know Agnes. Would she object if I accompanied her? But Agnes had a secret to discuss and a man would not be welcome, ‘I, too, have an important secret, Esmé. Something I wanted to say last night.’

Esmé cocked her head to one side, her blue eyes unblinking, a piece of toast halfway to her mouth. ‘Are you buying a new car? Is the airship out of trouble?’ Careless and light-minded, she had become a true Parisienne, taking nothing seriously save the exact effect on her looks of the latest mascara. While not begrudging her this happiness, I was a little irritated. Yet I could not sustain anger. I laughed. ‘The news is bad, darling. Our Company is worse than dead. The vultures close in and I’m the only meat left for them. Everyone else has run away.’ Her giggle was unexpected, like the trilling of a blackbird at a funeral. ‘They can’t harm you, Maxim. You’re invulnerable. You’ll come up with a plan.’ I had hoped for sympathy or at least concern and was disturbed rather than encouraged by this statement of confidence. ‘It’s a desperate plan, however,’ I said. ‘You must listen to me, Esmé.’

She was on her feet. I think she wished to avoid the truth, escape the disturbing facts. That was why she had behaved so strangely last night. She moved rapidly, nervously, still a dressed-up little girl, towards the door. ‘Then we must talk, of course, Maxim. I’ll be home by this afternoon. Let’s have tea somewhere at four. Shall I meet you here?’

‘I want to talk now.’

‘At four.’ She turned back, ran forward, put her arms round my neck, kissed me on the nose and smiled. ‘If it’s bad news, four o’clock’s the ideal time to hear it. If it’s good, we can celebrate tonight.’

I looked at the pile of letters I myself was too fearful to open. All were connected to the Company’s failure. I would never open them. I returned to bed, staying there until lunch time while I tried to review my situation. I was furiously incredulous that I was destitute. I lay in my huge, clean bed, looking up at the ornate ceiling while sunlight brought Parisian spring into the beautiful room. Yet my only asset, save for my Odessa luck pieces, was the Hotchkiss, which would have to be sold and the profit handed to Kolya for Esmé. Letting Esmé have her own money would be foolish. She had become habitually extravagant. She could spend anything I gave her in a day. The house would only be ours for another month and most of the furniture was gone. There was very little left to arrange. I could rely on Kolya to take care of anything else. My only fear was that my news would bring Esmé too heavily down to earth. I was afraid she would fall back into her delirium; I should not be able to leave her if she suffered another. I tried, with this in mind, rehearsing the exact tone of my revelations. But half my brain would not respond to the other. I hate to admit the truth: I was to be torn away from the girl I regarded as my own flesh. Yet I at least had become used to disappointment, disillusion, betrayal. She had known only sunshine and ease since she had met me. How much worse it might be for her, with no automatic means of anaesthetising herself.

I ate a sandwich and drank a glass of beer in the brasserie round the corner from the house, walking down St-Michel to the Seine. It was damp spring weather with a slight mist in the air and on the water. The quayside bookstalls were mostly closed up, but a few patient old men like unkempt dogs sat guarding their wares. Traffic clogging the bridge was so still, so muted, I imagined time had frozen and myself the only unaffected individual in the entire city. Sounds became increasingly muffled and faint. The people I passed took on an unreal appearance, like projections in a cinema film, though the colours were brilliant. I crossed over the bridge to Notre Dame where I stood looking up at the cathedral’s massive doors. They represented a barricade against the corruption of the world outside. In all her sensual beauty, Paris surrounded me; her trees, just budding, were isolated one from the other. She was the least compassionate of cities, the most self-involved. She rewarded success grudgingly while quickly punishing failure. In her present haughtiness it was impossible to imagine how she had been during the Revolution or the Siege, with the mob in her streets, screaming and destroying. I could understand, I thought, how she had come to be attacked by her own inhabitants; by pétroleuses with crazed, wounded eyes, trying to burn her into recognition of her own mortality. They had failed, if indeed that had ever been their ambition. She remained impassive. Poverty and distress merely disgusted her. Noise offended her. She turned away from it.

By the time I walked back it had begun to rain. Beside the little round church of St Julien Pauvre, I heard the almost mechanical click of water on her laurels, smelling the dampness of her graveyard as a curtain of drizzle moved slowly across to me. I kept to backstreets and doorways. I could not afford to be found either by Brodmann or Tsipliakov. But Paris knew I was there: she intended to purge me as if I were an alien microbe. I longed for the warm chaos of Rome, even the filth and clamouring greed of Constantinople. I could not begin to imagine New York. In other cities, in their marble and granite towers, the world’s Mapmakers were still at work. The arms dealers and the grain merchants tested the pulse of a desperate planet. Greeks were betrayed to Turks; Russians to Poles; Ukrainians to Russians and Italians to ‘Jugo-Slavs’. Ideas of virtue and probity were subtly discredited. Jazz music drowned all protest. Would America, providing so much of this distraction, be even worse than here? I countered my fear. There were Russian colonies in Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Argentina. If the United States failed me I could go South. From there it would be easy to find my way back to Europe. With this consolation I turned into the little cinema at L’Odeon and watched part of Birth of a Nation again, emerging into sunshine, my optimism restored.

I arrived back at the house by four, but Esmé did not return until six, full of pretty apologies, cursing buses and taxis and the traffic on the South Bank, kissing me all over my face, telling me about the present she had bought me. She had left it on the tram. She would get me another on Monday. It was too late to have tea, but since she seemed in such fundamentally good spirits I decided to speak.

‘Esmé, I have decided to leave France.’

‘What?’ She looked up from where she had been sorting through her purse. ‘For Rome?’

‘They’ll put me in prison if I don’t get as far away as possible. So I’m going to America.’

She was half smiling. She thought I joked. ‘But I want to go to America with you.’

‘You’ll join me there, as soon as Kolya has a passport for you. There’s a delay, because you have no proper documents. There are so many émigrés in your situation everything takes longer. It will only be a question of weeks at most. Then we’ll be together again.’

‘Where shall I live?’ She looked up frowning, putting the purse to one side. ‘The rent here is only good for another month.’

‘Kolya has offered you a room in their Paris apartment. He and Anäis are not there half the time so you’d have the place to yourself a good deal. And servants. Everything you want. Possibly Kolya and Anäis will be able to bring you to New York. They intend to go soon.’

She had grown pale and was biting her lower lip. Her eyes cast about as if she had lost something.

‘You mustn’t be afraid.’ I was gently reassuring. ‘You’ll soon be meeting Douglas Fairbanks.’

She smiled. ‘Maxim, do you love me?’

‘With all my heart.’ The question somehow disturbed me. ‘You are my wife, my sister. My daughter. My rose.’ I moved towards her.

‘Why do you love me?’

‘When I first saw you I felt something. An echo of recognition. I had always sought for you. I found you again. I’ve told you this before.’

‘I love you too, Maxim.’ She still seemed distracted. Perhaps she was resisting the meaning of my news.

‘I’ll stay, my darling, if you need me.’

She was brave, my little girl. ‘No. That would be wrong. I want you to go. I’ll join you soon. You must fulfil your destiny. It lies in America now.’

‘You’re behaving splendidly.’ I had expected tears.

‘It’s for the best,’ she said flatly.

I reached out and touched my fingers to her lips. She kissed them, glancing up at me with a strange, almost tragic, expression. Then she gasped and dropped her head. I held her shoulder. ‘You won’t notice I’m gone. You’ll know I’m with you in spirit the whole time. I love you, Esmé.’

‘I always feel you’re with me.’ Her voice was small, sounding oddly ashamed. Her response was mystifying and yet touching. ‘You must try not to miss me,’ I said.

‘You’re not leaving me for good, are you Maxim?’

‘Never! We shall be married one day. When you’re legally old enough.’ I smiled. ‘Perhaps in America where the age of consent is lower. That might be best. Would you like to be married in the Wild West? With Indian braves for guests? In a little wooden church on the plains?’

‘That would be wonderfully romantic.’ She stood up. Suddenly shy, she took my hand. ‘Let’s go to bed now.’

Our evening was beautiful in the peace and delicacy of our love-making. It had been the same with Kolya. There is a kind of release when lovers are about to separate for a while.

Oh, Esmé, my sister. My wistful spirit. My ideal. I never wanted you to be a woman. They took you and forced your face into the dirt and horror of the world. You said you were awake at last. But what is wrong with a dream? It harmed no one. It leaves no stain. Why talk of death when it is inevitable? What drives these people to spread despondent news like rats spread plague? Why should we know fear? They tore me from beauty and hope. With whips and pistols they drove me from my childhood, into this unbearable, cold, futureless wasteland. Children are trudging through the mud of the twentieth century; trudge across the wreckage of the world, homeless and without love. Questo dev’essere un errore. Non mi dimentichi. Men ken platsn!

It poured all the way to Cherbourg: waves of light rain drifting like smoke across meadows and woods as the bluebells of France bloomed and the trees came to furious leaf. The train was warm. It smelled of coal and garlic and old women’s perfume. My brave little girl had stood with Kolya on the platform, waving a handkerchief, turning and smiling suddenly at my friend as if he had made a joke. He was frozen in black worsted, hat on head, hands in pockets, his white face expressionless as he watched the train pull out. Esmé, in red and white, leapt like a flag at a fete; she seemed still to be bouncing as the train curved and I lost sight of her. I was not at that moment much distressed. The prospect of travel as usual drove all other thoughts away. I refused to brood on that disaster which overtook my first real chance of public success. It would have produced unnecessary melancholia at best, insanity at worst. So I sat back in my seat, raised my hat to the three maiden ladies going to visit their sisters, to the dignified schoolboy sitting with Zola in his hand, and then took an interest in the countryside.

I looked on the bright side. I was, after all, Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, a citizen of France, a man of affairs, on my way to catch a ship. The scandal would be forgotten. My achievements would be remembered. Presently, I was well dressed, carried my patents in my luggage, together with my Georgian pistols. There was no need to waste time on regrets. I was a free man. I was twenty-one years old. I had experienced more than most people do in a long life. And in America my diplomas, my honourable War record, would be even more impressive than in Europe. The sisters, when they spoke to me, were plainly admiring of my bearing and my appearance. When the train arrived I helped them onto the platform before attending to my own affairs. With a whole entourage of porters I marched from station to docks. It was impossible to miss my ship. She dwarfed every building, every piece of machinery in the port. I had never seen a ship so huge. I stared upwards, trying to make out the details of her decks. Little white faces peered back from far away. The Mauretania was a massive wall of dark metal topped by terraces of white and gold: the monstrous nine deck’d city as Kipling described her. Having served creditably throughout the War she was back in private service again; still the ship for whom most travellers had the greatest affection, particularly now, since cowardly U-boats had sunk her sister, the Lusitania. Leading my porters, I ascended the ramp specially prepared for First Class passengers. Entering an arch as tall as any palace’s I was greeted by a uniformed steward who inspected my ticket then led me towards the First Class boat deck. In the harbour intrusive tugboat horns were contentious and ill-mannered beyond the fading mist. My ship’s brass, woodwork, impeccable paint and silvered metal, glowed with an inner radiance, as if she were a living beast. I never knew any security greater than I experienced on entering my stateroom.

Having tipped steward and porters and stopped to look through the porthole at Cherbourg’s roofs and steeples, I lay down on a wide bed. I lit a cigarette. I did not care if my voyage took a year or more. Momentarily there came a tremendous, unexpected pang, as I realised neither Esmé nor Kolya were here to share my impressions; but a little cocaine soon helped me pull myself together. I was determined to be positive, to enjoy every moment of my stay on board the floating city. After all, I had no clear idea of what I might have to deal with when I arrived. I washed and changed my clothes.

Two hours later the bustle of the ship suddenly grew still. Anxious not to miss the experience I stepped outside my cabin just as the shorelines were let go. I went to join other passengers at the forward rails. Tugs were towing us slowly out to open water. The sun was dull, diffused, a splash of orange near the horizon. The sea was grey and white, alive with birds. The ship’s horns sounded a triumph, a farewell. When the hawsers were released, humming and hissing, they curled away and sliced into the waves, to be hauled in by invisible winches. The Mauretania dipped her prow, then rose gracefully. A breeze-borne spray striking our faces, we cheered with delight. Already there was a sense of comradeship between us, as there must always be on such a vessel. We moved into magical twilight. Slowly battery upon battery of electric bulbs blossomed everywhere on the ship. She was magnificent. She was a fabulous, unworldly apparition. She turned, this dignified aristocrat, towards the sunset and the West. I went below. I wished to put the final touches to my costume before dinner.

I inspected myself carefully as I tied my tie. I was not dissatisfied, for I was undeniably handsome. I had an excellent figure, my high forehead spoke of brains and breeding, my strong nose of aggressive but fair-minded confidence, my dark eyes of romantic sensitivity. I could mix easily with nobleman and intellectual alike. Straightening my back, I gave a final salute to France. I was more than glad to leave that land of haughty thieves with soft hands and old names. Now I was breathing the clean air of the ocean. This was the first time since leaving Odessa that I could resume my full title without fear of jealousy, cynicism or assassination. Tonight it would not be considered in good taste to wear uniform, but I would wear one tomorrow.

At length, in crisp and well cut evening dress, I strolled wide white and brass companionways. The drums and bass fiddle of an orchestra issued from the far off dining-salon. They were playing a waltz. I almost wept with relief. Raucous jazz, dazzling cubist colours, smart nonsense, Constructivist distortions, all were abolished here. This was the world of breeding and affluence I had always prepared myself, for, since a child in Kiev. Until now it had always been snatched from me by the hands of the ignorant mob or the over sophisticated bourgeois banker. I was, I will admit, in an elevated state of mind. I experienced feelings which I can only describe as holy. I felt I had attained something very close to a state of grace.

In the floating land of Mauretania I could now join my own. I had at last found a true spiritual home!