Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

26

THEN CAME the northeasterly.

Back in Odessa I had heard many stories about it.

A colleague from the Russian Word had returned from Novorossiisk all bandaged up and covered in plasters. He’d been caught by a northeasterly. He’d been quietly walking along—and then the wind had knocked him off his feet and rolled him along the street until he managed to catch hold of a lamppost.

I’d also heard of steamers being ripped from their moorings and blown out to sea. Only one had been left in the bay—a cunning American who had got up full steam and headed into the wind. By making straight toward the shore, he had managed to stay in one place.

While I didn’t exactly believe all these stories, I was, nevertheless, eager to see what this northeasterly was really like.

People said it could only count in threes. It blew for three days, or six days, or nine days, and so on.

And then my wish was granted.

Our Shilka began shrieking, screeching and groaning. Not one of her bolts, chains, or cables was silent. The rigging whistled; every bit of metal clanged.

I set off into town with the secret hope that I too would be knocked off my feet and rolled along the street, like my colleague from the Russian Word.

I got as far as the market without incident and was buying a few little bits and pieces when, suddenly, splinters were flying, a dark cloud of dust was soaring into the air, and the awning above the stalls gave a great clap. Something crashed to the ground—and then something pink and frothy closed me off from the rest of the world.

I desperately tried to shake myself free. The world opened up again and the pink thing—my own skirt, which had billowed up over my head—wrapped itself around my legs.

Embarrassed, I looked around. Everyone was screwing up their eyes, rubbing them, shielding their faces with their bent arms. My first introduction to the northeasterly appeared to have passed unnoticed. There was just one woman some way away, a bagel seller, who was still watching me, and shaking with laughter.

The northeasterly continued to rage for twelve days. Every kind of howl in the world—anguished, spiteful, sorrowing, savage—could be heard from the ship’s rigging. Sailors were swept off decks and traders blown away from the market; the streets were emptied of people. Not a boat was left in the roadstead, not a cart on the shore.

Yellow columns of dust roamed about the town as they pleased,[122] rolling stones down the road, whirling debris of every kind through the air.

One day the waves brought us the bloated corpse of a cow.

Evidently it was not uncommon for the wind to hurl cattle into the sea.

The cadets tried to push the cow away with long boat hooks, but it kept coming back. It floated about for a long time, a monstrous, swollen balloon, now moving away a little, now bobbing up right beside us.

Those of us still left on the Shilka wandered about dejectedly.

To your left, if you went up on deck, you saw a silent city, all dust and debris, exhausted by anxiety, fear, and typhus. And to your right lay the boundless sea, the waves hurriedly and mindlessly buffeting one another, mounting one another and then dropping back down, crushed by other, newer waves that spat at them in foaming fury.

Agitated gulls were swooping about, bitterly flinging what sounded like last words—hopeless, fragmentary last words—at one another.

Gray sky.

It was all very dismal.

At night, the thudding and crashing overhead made it impossible to sleep. If you left your airless cabin and went up on deck, the wind would spin you round, seize hold of you, slam the door behind you, then drag you away into the darkness, where it whistled and howled as it harried a frightened crowd of waves, driving them off, driving them away….

Away from these shores of despair. But where? Where to?

Soon we too might be driven away by the raging elements, but where would we go? Where in the wide world?

And so you would return to your cabin.

And lie on your hard wooden bunk and listen to the midshipman strumming his out-of-tune guitar and to the violent coughing of the old Chinese cook—the man who had once “got so angry his heart broke.”[123]

I was wandering about the city, hoping to find something out. I came upon what had once been the editorial office of what had once been the Novorossiisk newspaper. But nobody there knew anything. Or rather, everybody there knew a great deal, each knowing the exact opposite of what everyone else knew.

On one thing, however, they were all agreed: Odessa was now in the hands of the Bolsheviks.

Once, as I was walking about the town, I saw Batkin, the famous “sailor.”[124] He turned out to be a young dandy of a student, always strolling about the city with a crowd of admiring young ladies. He would tell them the story of how he had almost been shot by a firing squad. Only thanks to his extraordinary eloquence had he gotten away with his life. But he told all this without much conviction or flair and didn’t seem particularly bothered about whether or not his story was believed. The only dramatic moment was when he was facing death with the name of his beloved on his lips. At this point the young ladies would all lower their eyes as one.

Looking at this sleek, well-groomed student, I remembered the fiery sailor who used to come out on stage at the Mariinsky Theatre, stand in front of a large Saint Andrew’s flag,[125] and passionately exhort the audience never to give up the fight. Correspondents from the Evening Stock Exchange[126] would then clap and cheer from the royal box.

This sailor might have been a phoenix, he might have risen from the flames, but he too was soon whirled away by the northeasterly… Only dust and debris… Later, or so I heard, he offered his services to the Bolsheviks. It’s not impossible.[127]

Dust and debris.

But I shall not forget the evenings I saw him standing in front of the Saint Andrew’s flag.

I continued to wander about the city.

I began to come across new groups of refugees. Among them were people I had already met elsewhere.

In their faces I saw something new. What struck me, what stayed in my mind, was the way these people’s eyes were constantly darting about. Shifting about in embarrassment, in confusion, and even—momentarily—taking on a look of insolence. As if they needed just a few more seconds before they could settle into this insolence, before they could feel secure in it.

I understood later that these were people who, like poor Alexandr Kugel, were troubled by a sense of uncertainty: On whose side were might and right now?

These people were waiting to see which way the wind was blowing. They wanted to establish themselves here while keeping in with the authorities back there.

I happened to meet the senior official who, in Kiev, had declared he would not rest until he had slain seven Bolsheviks on the grave of his executed brother “so that their blood seeps through the earth, so that it seeps down to my brother’s tortured body!”

He was not looking especially militant. Shoulders hunched, he was constantly turning this way and that way, looking around furtively, glancing slyly out of the corners of his eyes.

His whole manner with me was rather strained. He did not so much as mention his seven Bolsheviks and he made no great display of feeling. He seemed more like a man trying to make his way across a swamp, struggling to keep his footing on a narrow log.

“But what about your family?” I asked. “Where are they?”

“At the moment they’re in Kiev. Still, we’ll be seeing each other soon.”

“Soon? But how are you going to get back to Kiev?”

For some reason he looked around him. The same new look of furtive resentment.

“Soon there’ll probably be all kinds of opportunities. But this isn’t really the moment to be talking about them.”

Opportunities did indeed soon arise for him. And he remains an esteemed and successful figure, working in Moscow…

My memories of those first days in Novorossiisk still lie behind a curtain of gray dust. They are still being whirled about by a stifling whirlwind—just as scraps of this and splinters of that, just as debris and rubbish of every kind, just as people themselves were whirled this way and that way, left and right, over the mountains or into the sea. Soulless and mindless, with the cruelty of an elemental force, this whirlwind determined our fate.