Byzantium Endures (56 page)

‘You’re of the same rank. Why listen?’

We passed a broken Nieuport and an Albatros. Someone had tried, stupidly, to combine the parts. Neither plane would ever fly. Yermeloff ignored my question. Like a master with his dog, he let me stand by the aeroplanes as if waiting while I sniffed at something interesting. He said: ‘You mustn’t approach the commissars. Grishenko wants to keep you for us. We need mechanics, you see.’

‘Hrihorieff will have him shot. I’m a resource being diverted for Grishenko’s own use.’ I was outraged. I had really become a slave; a pawn.

‘Hrihorieff might pretend to have Grishenko shot. But Grishenko would not die.’ Yermeloff was amused. ‘I, however, would be shot if I let you go. You see the game Grishenko’s playing? You are now my responsibility.’

‘It’s a children’s game!’

‘All war’s that. Have you any titles, by the way?’

‘I have a Doctorate from the University of Kiev. Petlyura made me a major against my will.’

‘Major will be good. You’re now Major Pyatnitski of our Engineering Corps. Work well with us. You’ll get quick promotion.’ He helped me pick my way through a group of drunken, coughing partisans who lounged outside a hut. By the smell, the place was used as a latrine. ‘You outrank me already, you see!’

I was still tired. I was out of my depth. I had to stay with Yermeloff. He was my sole link with sanity in this unholy chaos. I resented him, nonetheless. He mocked me. The camp stretched for miles along the railway tracks. Occasionally long trains steamed in. They dispensed soldiers, guns, booty. Cossacks stumbled between moving locomotives, scarcely aware of them. I saw several men come close to being crushed under the wheels.

These were our noble Red fighters. Most of them could not even read Hrihorieff’s proclamations. Those who could read were too insensible with vodka to focus on the words. Yet many were, indeed, true Cossacks, fighting for the freedoms eroded by the decrees of a dozen bungling Tsars. In the thirties they would become a source of terror to Stalin. He would disband all Cossack units. By the forties those units would be revived and their old glories recalled to give them the morale to fight Germans. Many went over immediately to the German side and continued to fight for their own needs. Stalin was enraged. He gave the order to shoot all returning Cossacks as traitors. It did not matter if they had been POWs or partisans or fighting with the Axis. The liberal British, the good-natured Americans, packed them into trains and ships and delivered them up to hideous and dishonourable death. Few escaped. Some are in Canada, where the weather and land (if not the eager MacDonalds and Campbells) are more to their taste. They escaped but they lost their Russian souls; that inner life so necessary to a Russian and such an irritating cargo to an American. Some, in Russia, sell their souls nightly, prancing and singing for tourists. Even Hrihorieff’s partisans were not drinking to lose consciousness, but to find their souls; to find God and seek His confirmation that what they did was just. It was not. And God did not tell them it was. So they continued to drink. At the time I was nervous of them. Looking back, I feel pity.

We entered a tent with two camp-beds of standard army design. Yermeloff scratched himself and frowned. ‘We’ll have to find you a palliasse.’

‘You share this tent?’

‘With my friend Grishenko.’

So I was to sleep with Yermeloff and his master. I was to be the slave of a slave. Yermeloff opened an ammunition box. It had not been locked. Anyone could have stolen from it. He took out a bottle of good vodka: a brand I recognised from my Odessa days. I accepted his offer and drank deep from the neck. Alcohol warms and blurs. Cocaine brings coldness and clarity. It was alcohol I needed. Yermeloff told me to wait. He closed the tent-flap behind him as he left, but I watched through a parting. He headed back towards the railway yards, laughing and joking with the soldiers, walking with a brutal swagger which made me suspect his ‘gentle’ manner might actually be the facade. I sat down on one of the beds. I tried to make sense of things. It was impossible. I had been captured by Cossacks. I was only alive because Grishenko thought I could help his prestige, his ambition, while Yermeloff wanted an audience for his sentimental drivel. I could be shot with impunity. I could be tortured. I took another drink and began to laugh. Here was a test of my wits. I would use the alcohol in order to sleep; then tomorrow I would make the best use of some cocaine. I had decided to follow Yermeloff’s lead. Until I could get to safety, I would be as hardened a partisan as the next man. I would elevate myself, not as Yermeloff intended to do, but through my intellect. I would make myself indispensable to these savages. I recalled stories by Conan Doyle and Haggard, where white men fell amongst natives and baffled them with simple scientific tricks. Not Grishenko or even Hrihorieff but
The Lost World and King Solomon’s Mines
would be my models.

Yermeloff returned. He took the vodka from my hand. ‘That stuffs hard to come by. I had to trade a woman for three bottles.’ He stood aside as two filthy partisans with rime and spittle in their beards placed a straw mattress and a blanket on the ground. Dumped on top of these was a ragged greatcoat, a sheepskin hat with parts of the sheep still clinging to it, a pair of clumsy felt boots and some moth-eaten fur gloves. ‘Much-prized.’ Yermeloff corked the vodka. ‘Put them on.’

‘My own coat...’

‘We Cossacks are touchy about people who are too proud to dress like everyone else.’ He spoke insouciantly but with such a significant little gesture of the bottle that I followed his advice. My good coat was removed; the rags were donned. Lice were already crawling on my body. The felt boots were big enough to fit over my shoes. I almost immediately became warmer. ‘Let your beard grow if you can,’ said Yermeloff. I was resentful of this. I had tried to grow a beard. The result had made me look like a cankerous spaniel. It would be two or three years before a proper growth would come. By then, of course, beards were out of fashion, in reaction to those elders who had proven themselves so useless in allowing the War to begin. A small moustache would give character to my face by 1925.

Yermeloff stood back, looking me over. ‘Wear the hat set high and to one side.’ He pushed it into position himself. ‘Don’t you know the expression: Beware of men who wear their caps over their eyes? A cap pushed up shows you to be a brave, open Russian, a daring Cossack needing no protection from anything. You say your father was a Zaporizhian. Didn’t he teach you this?’

‘He’s dead.’ How things had reversed. I brought myself a certain glory from what had been, until now, my shame. ‘He was a Socialist Revolutionary. An assassin. He was shot in 1906 for his part in the uprising.’

Yermeloff was pleased. ‘You really are what you say! You’re a puzzle, young major. A boy genius, a hardened socialist, and half a Zaporizhian Cossack. What was your mother?’

‘Her family was Polish.’

This seemed significant. He nodded his head but remained silent. I sat down again on the edge of the bed. He uncorked the bottle. ‘Take a small swig this time. I’m mean about vodka of this quality.’

‘You shouldn’t leave it untended. It could be stolen.’

‘Cossacks don’t steal from each other.’ He was sardonically serious. ‘Zaporizhians have their pride.’ He unbuttoned his coat, wiping at his neck with a piece of rag. ‘Would you dare steal from one?’

‘I’m not a thief.’

‘We’re not thieves. We forage, particularly in ghettos. We make appropriations, particularly from unguarded trains.’

‘I was taught to respect Cossack honour. You need not remind me of, nor should you mock at, true Zaporizhian ethics. Those men out there are scum.’

‘The Cossack hosts began as scum. When Moscow sought their help against the Tatars she made them into wholesomely romantic figures. They do the same to this day to trappers and cowboys in America.’

This was ridiculous. But it was best to say nothing. Yermeloff took out one of his black-and-silver flintlocks. He sighted along the barrel. ‘These are useless if you try to handle them like modern firearms. According to logic, it would be impossible to hit anything with one. That’s why these are mine. As some men can master a particular horse, I can master these. They are the symbol of my survival!’

I was unimpressed. Later, Paris and Berlin would be like nineteenth-century arsenals. Every ‘ataman’ would be selling his booty as family heirlooms.

The tent flap opened. Grishenko swaggered in. He had a coarse-featured girl with him. He said nothing, but Yermeloff buttoned up his coat and signed to me. We left. Grishenko chuckled and spoke to the girl in Ukrainian. Her answering giggle was ghastly. I would not have expected this sound from so experienced a whore.

Yermeloff looked at the sky. It was grey as the snow. He cursed, ‘I left the vodka. Grishenko’s bound to drink the lot.’

‘I thought Cossacks never stole from each other.’

Yermeloff walked ahead. Again he was the bully-boy. He said in a harsh voice. ‘Grishenko’s my friend. What I have is his.’

‘And what he has?’

Yermeloff stopped, then he laughed. ‘His.’ He came back to put an arm round my shoulder. I remembered Mrs Cornelius and her fox-pelts. I longed to see her Mercedes. I longed for Odessa and my mother and Esmé. Yermeloff led me towards the water-tanker. ‘We’ll try some of the ordinary.’ Bandits took no notice of me. I had reduced my outer appearance to the level of their own. A tin cup was passed from the crowd around the wagon. The vodka was no worse than that I had had on the train. Potoaki would by now be in Odessa, enjoying the benefits of the Rule of Law while plotting its destruction. The Revolution had been a work of modern art; convulsive, undisciplined, emotional and formless. Lenin and Deniken were trying to repaint it to their own tastes. Trotsky had been the catalyst for this whole war and how he enjoyed himself, standing on the roofs of trains, making speeches to soldiers from motor-cars, stalking ahead of his generals. What a fool that Jew looked to anyone with half an eye. A goose in the heron-pond. He was ridiculous in his glasses, his beard, his uniform. An irritating, self-opinionated buffoon. I could not see why Mrs Cornelius found him attractive, unless it was his power. He was a bungler. Almost every disaster after 1918 can be blamed on him. They called him the greatest general since Joshua: it is an insult to Joshua. Lenin loved him. They were two of a kind. Antonov was an intellectual but he knew how to fight. Mrs Cornelius should have taken up with him. But perhaps Antonov was too strong. She liked men, in those days, she could manipulate. She had a weakness for a fool. She liked them safely married. I do not think Antonov was married. I know nothing about him. Stalin probably had him killed in one of those trials. I avoided Russians between the wars. I would sometimes even claim to be Polish or Czech. I could not stand the sympathy of those who took up with émigrés; they made me self-conscious. I want to be myself; not the representative of a culture.

We approached a railway siding where a proclamation had been pinned to a telegraph post. The vodka was affecting my stomach. I mentioned this to Yermeloff. ‘You’re hungry,’ he said. ‘We’ll get some food here.’

A carriage once belonging to a first-class train was being used as a canteen. From the galley came hideous smells. I felt far worse. Yermeloff swung up the steps. Not wishing to be left alone and yet terrified of what I should have to eat, I followed him. We seated ourselves amongst a group of Cossack officers who ate soup and complained about it. A boy brought us two bowls and a piece of bread each. The soup was dark yellow, containing pieces of pale meat. I tried to gather my courage. Yermeloff joined some of the others in laughing at me. ‘He’s new. An engineer. Major Pyatnitski.’ I grinned with dry lips. This caused them further amusement. I drank a little of the broth and felt no worse for it. The taste was loathsome. I nibbled the meat. It was oddly tender. I swallowed and hastily ate some bread. It was hard. It had the texture and flavour of cheap soap.

‘Where are you from, comrade?’ This from a burly Cossack wearing beard and moustachios in the old Tsarist style. He was handsomely uniformed, though with the inevitable red cockade in his cap and an armband on his sleeve.

‘From Kiev.’

‘They make young majors there.’

‘Without much effort,’ I told him. ‘I was a civilian engineer.’

‘Who did you work for?’ The question was not emphatic but I was unsure of its meaning. I looked to Yermeloff who rescued me with: ‘His father was an SR.’