Byzantium Endures

EIGHT

FOUR DAYS LATER THE train arrived in Kiev. By the time I struggled from the freezing compartment into the afternoon gloom I had been robbed of some books, a couple of inexpensive figurines bought for my mother, and a pair of gloves. Luckily I had some fur mittens of Kolya’s. I put these on before gripping my bags and setting off on foot in the direction of Kirillovskaya and my mother’s flat.

My city was occupied by every kind of scum: deserters who had killed their officers, peasants who had murdered their masters, workers who had stolen from their employers; all had come to Kiev to spend their gold on drink and women. In the train I had met a great many Petrograd businessmen, nobles and intellectuals, and similar individuals in flight from Moscow. They were hoping to get to Yalta or Odessa or anywhere on the coast. I do not know where they expected to go from there. Turks and Germans blockaded us on every sea. Perhaps those places were less infected with Revolutionary madness. Here red banners hung between buildings; there were proclamations on walls (some in Ukrainian, which baffled me); meetings were carried on at every corner; and bands were playing Shevchenko’s The Ukraine Will Never Die as well as La Marseillaise. The floors of the train had been filthy with expectorated sunflower seeds and with every other sort of inanimate and animate rubbish. There was no difference here, either on pavements or in parks. Incompetents had taken charge. Kiev had collapsed as a civilised city. Trams had ceased to run on time; cabs had disappeared; bands of drunken brigands in sailors’ uniforms and army greatcoats roamed about at will, demanding money, drink, food, cigarettes, from passers-by. Because the democratic Rada had not defined it, police and Cossack militia were uncertain of their authority. Should they try to arrest the brigands? Should they merely ask them to leave other comrades alone? Should they shoot on sight? Should they simply ignore the activities of the new aristos? The deserters and convicts were armed to the teeth, cheerfully willing to kill anyone who frustrated them: a typical situation in all Russia’s cities during Kerenski’s days. It would get worse. The Bolsheviks would merely legalise the terror and give it moral justification. Every murder victim became a liquidated bourgeois just as nowadays they are all listed as traffic accidents. It looked as if half the city was drunk and the other half sunk into dejection. I passed by Podol. The whole ghetto had turned Red: the Jews were celebrating their conquests. I bought a Voice of Kiev. It had already taken on a nationalist note.

By the time I reached our quiet, unlit street, I had realised I must support any authority, even if it were socialist. My arms and back ached horribly. I tugged the bags up the dark, smelly staircase to our landing. I knocked at the apartment door. There was silence. I went up a flight and pulled Captain Brown’s bell. Soon the old Scot stood quivering in the opening. His breath was heavy with homemade vodka. His eyes were scarcely able to focus.

‘It is I.’

He coughed in surprise. He wiped at his untrimmed moustache as if it were a piece of food he had found adhering to his lip. ‘Your mother will be very pleased.’

‘Mother isn’t in.’

‘Bring your bags.’ He gestured a welcome. ‘Thieves everywhere. You might have been murdered. The envious wretches will kill anyone with a hint of refinement.’ He stumbled down after me and tried to pick up a suitcase. He failed. I had never seen him so helpless. He was old and pathetic.

We entered his hollow flat. Through all my childhood it had been a piece of the Britain I loved: trophies on the walls, English pictures and books. Even the carpets had seemed English. Now the captain had sold everything of value. I was appalled. I wished someone had warned me of his decline. He sat on a bare table and apologised. ‘Hard times. The War. Your mother works late at the laundry. They had to release half the staff. Others have gone off God knows where. Into the countryside, probably, to join the looting. The government’s trying to stop it. Could be worse. The first days were horrifying.’ He poured cloudy vodka into a glass. ‘A dram?’

I accepted. It looked poisonous. He said, ‘With luck things will soon be normal. Prince Lvov isn’t interested in Ukrainian independence and Kerenski wants us to go on fighting the Germans.’

I smiled and sipped the awful stuff. ‘You’ve been infected by politics, Captain Brown.’

‘It’s a political world.’ He slumped. ‘Esmé went to Galicia. Did she write?’

I was disappointed. ‘When did she leave?’

‘Two weeks ago. Mixed force. British motor division and Cossack cavalry. A lot of desertion. Hope the little girl’s all right.’ He became hazy. Again he wiped at his moustache as if bewildered by it. ‘They’re not kind to women are they? They conscripted peasants. And Mongols?’

I began to worry. ‘The nurses should be recalled.’

‘Won’t come back. Too noble.’

I explained to Captain Brown that I needed rest. Could he let me in downstairs? He regretted there had been an incident. He could not remember it clearly, but he had insisted afterwards that my mother take back his set of her keys. There was now a spare at the laundry. I did not have the energy to walk to the laundry so I remained seated on one of the captain’s last decrepit chairs. The vodka made me light-headed. I had no desire to greet my mother smelling of cheap alcohol, but the stuff jolted me awake whenever I began to doze. Captain Brown had lapsed into English. He was telling a story of Pathans on the North West Frontier, mixed with almost identical tales of the Malay Archipelago, and of coal-mines in Welsh valleys, where dynamite had caused subsidence, destroying villages. Dynamite was the common feature of all three tales: its misuse by people who did not understand it, its need to be properly placed, to be fitted with the correct detonators. Captain Brown kept confusing the various locations. Pathans appeared in Merthyr Tydfil and Celtic pit-men in Surabaya.

At length I heard a sound on the landing below. I went to the banister and looked down. My mother, straight-backed as ever, with her marvellous hair piled neatly on top of her head, wearing a smart, black overcoat, black dress, and black boots, was opening our door. ‘Mother!’ I descended.

She turned. She began to weep. She made no attempt to come to me. I was unable to move towards her. Perhaps she had reconciled herself to my disappearance or even to my death. Now she could not believe her son (elegant and poised, if rather tired) stood before her. Eventually I reached her and embraced her, kissing her hand as she kissed my forehead. She asked me if I would be staying for a meal. I assured her I would stay for some time. Shaking with emotion, she took me by the arm and led me into the flat. I found the place homely, simple and comforting. With a sigh I paused and looked around me. I smiled, it is good to be here.’

‘Oh, my dear son.’ Again we embraced.

She began to engage herself with the stove, with the samovar, with the soup-pot. Captain Brown knocked lightly on the door before dragging my bags in. I explained I had bought presents which had then been stolen. They commiserated. Captain Brown collapsed onto my mother’s couch. He said I had been lucky to arrive with so much. How were things in the capital? I said they were not good. Captain Brown had heard that Americans were arriving in huge airships with some kind of ray to kill thousands at a stroke, ‘It might conclude the War and let the Tsar restore order. The end of trench-fighting. But the buggers seem to have become attached to those holes in the ground. You’d think they were all bloody Welshmen!’ He laughed heartily at this obscure racial joke. My mother had not realised he had sworn. In her presence he never swore in Russian. One Russian oath is worth twenty Greek ones. In the company of men, Captain Brown could have won any argument in any tavern in Kiev by the sheer force and colour of his vocabulary. Now his head fell upon his chest and he began to snore. He had left his bottle behind but its effects remained with him for an hour.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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