Byzantium Endures (69 page)

‘You’re very kind. But Reds are men ...’

‘They’ll be trying to deny that fact,’ I said. ‘You should listen to me, Zoyea. Gypsies and Jews will not be the only ones to suffer under the Cheka. They’re anxious to eradicate all signs of their own and therefore others’ humanity.’ (To be honest, I do not think I phrased my warning so elegantly. Time improves all conversations, particularly one’s own. I was to see Zoyea again, I am glad to say, in Berlin.) ‘You are only safe while men admit their vulnerability. When they pretend they are demigods, you should be afraid.’ We kissed once more. She asked if I would like to make love. I told her I needed nothing to distract me. We kissed shyly, then.

It was dark, of course, when I left for the Quarantine Harbour and the
Rio Cruz.
In a troika, we trotted through heavy snow, through an Odessa still excited, still alive. Some would call her sordid, but even in death she held a warmth and elegance denied more famous cities. Catherine had founded her. Catherine’s spirit, at once cruel and intelligent, feminine and aggressive, remained in her. Catherine had courted Reason and been confused by Romance, but in her they had reached a kind of harmony that was Russian, though she was not. I saw Dietrich as
The Scarlet Empress
by von Sternberg. I loved it. It ruined him. The only Hollywood film of its day to lose money. We reached the harbour and to my relief the ship was active. People were going aboard. They were almost all rich Russians.

I do not think I was followed. Indeed, I have the idea my Commanding Officer might have given me the chance to escape. I have been shown considerable kindness. I do not deny it.

My papers were checked several times, first by Russians, then by grim-looking Englishmen. I walked up the gangplank. It vibrated under booted feet. I was on the deck of my first large ship. She flew English colours, but was probably a spoil of war, taken from some South American state which, in the heat of the moment, had decided to ally with Germany. Many of the signs were still in Spanish. I climbed another gangway. There was no one to help me with my luggage. I reached a forward cabin on the upper deck. I opened the door. Mrs Cornelius was not there. It was dark. I switched on the weak electrics. The cabin had been converted for two passengers. There were two bunks. There were washing facilities. I put down my bags and took out my cocaine. I had to keep certain thoughts at bay. The cocaine had its usual positive effect. I began to think of Constantinople. It would be warm there. I was very cold. The cabin had no proper heating system. I stretched out on the upper bunk, assuming that Mrs Cornelius would require the lower. Her luggage, several trunks and cases, was stowed in one corner, near the forward porthole. I was still ready for trouble. It was possible I could be taken off before the ship upped anchor. The
Rio Cruz
rocked very slightly. The motion made me think we were leaving and that Mrs Cornelius had missed the ship, but I knew enough to understand that the engines would have to begin turning before we would be able to head for open sea.

I got up from my bunk. I looked through the porthole. The sea was black, almost as if ice had formed on it. People came and went about the ship. I thought I heard shots, but from a good distance along the dock. I had left too easily and yet I accepted my good fortune. I had hardly questioned the fact that Mrs Cornelius would again be the means of my salvation. Wrapped in my Russian fur, I fell asleep.

I was awakened by grey dawn and a song. It was Mrs Cornelius. She was quite drunk. She had her hat on the back of her head. She was singing something from the British music-hall. ‘We don’t wanter fight, but by jingo if we do, we got ther ships, we got ther men, we got the money, too. We’ve fought the bear before, an’ while we’re Britons troo-oo, ther Russians shall not ‘ave Constanti-no-pol. Oops, sorry Ivan. No offence.’

She sat on her bunk. ‘I feel a bit queasy on boats, don’t you? Orlways ‘ave done. Oo-er.’ She was trying to remove her boots. I glanced at her wonderfully rounded calves. She sensed me behind her and looked up. She winked. She was delicious. Her perfume, her clothes, her confident womanhood. ‘Don’t worry, chum,’ she said, to cover my embarrassment, ‘I’m not ashamed of ‘em. I’ve reached me maturity, yer know. I’m used ter a bit o’ admiration.’ She stood up in her stockinged feet and began to ease her back. ‘Cor! Wot a farewell party that was! Anyway, we’re spliced, ain’t we? They tol’ me you was ‘ere when them sailors ‘elped me aboard.’

‘Do you mean married?’ I asked her. I was not fully awake.

She shook her head. Evidently she had made her mind up on the moral score, ‘In name only, Ivan, old fruit. See, I give me word ter that Froggy. ‘E ain’t much, but ‘e ‘elped me get art o’that ‘ell-’ole. An’ I like ter keep me word, if I can.’

I accepted her decision. It would be many years before we were married in the carnal sense. The ship swayed. She was not of the latest design and had no sophisticated stabilisers, no Pratt and Whitneys, although, I was to learn, she had been built on the Clyde. I still felt cold. Snow was falling on the ship. It settled on rigging and rails. I thought it would sink us. But everything was purified against the blackness of that water. It was impossible to see the city through the blizzard. I searched for the outline of the Nicholas Church. Odessa was lost to me, as Esmé was lost, as Kolya was lost, almost casually.

I am not a Jew. I am not a racialist. I remembered how the Jew in Arcadia had been kind to me; how I had loved him. The thought was not pleasant. I recollected the incident a day or so ago, now that I am old and selfish and unattractive. The selfish are only attractive when young. I have given much, but never as much as I have received.

Later, I would go out on deck and stand in the Russian snow, letting it cover me from head to toe, while the ship sailed steadily for the heat of that Holy City, our Tsargrad, which, for the moment, the British had freed from Islam. We had fought for Byzantium more than once. We had been deceived by Patriarchs more than once. But we had known honour and we had taken that honour back with us to Kiev. From Kiev it had passed to Moscow. Bells rang from the shore. It was Christmas Eve. Moscow was lost. Christ was betrayed. Bells rang from St Nicholas for the birth of the Saviour whose trust was mocked. The Reds swept in; the red tide rose and disgorged its walking dead, its ancient reapers of vengeance with their sickles: Carthage come from beyond the sea. Ghosts of Tatars and Turks laughed together beneath the windy banners of Islam, beneath the flapping banners of Bolshevism, beneath the banners of barbarism and cynicism and a passionless vengeance which dared to grace itself with the name of piety. Down from his hillsides came the Bandit Tsar, the Steel Tsar from the East, with four faces. Oh, my sister and my brother and my mother. You are fallen beneath the chariot of the Antichrist. Those whom I loved and who loved me; they are all fallen. They would not come to the city of sleeping goats, the city of the Jew. They would not come to Odessa and be saved by me. They thought Byzantium would save them, but Byzantium could not. The Greek could not come to Odessa. We fled before Carthage. The Greek could not come to Russia. Russia, knowing only pride, fell. They put a piece of metal in my womb. They poisoned me with their kindness. They confused me. Why did they not let me die? The Germans came, with their Ukrainian Cossacks, and they put a camp in the gorge where I had flown. And they put an old woman into the sea of ashes and they drowned her with their bullets and the blood of thousands. Jew and Russian mingled blood at last. Black goats bleat. What sacrifice is worth their death?

They rode through Russia with their flags and their machine-guns and they took away our honour. We left it with them to die and had only our pride. They took away our language. They took away our Christ. But the Slavs know Carthage. The Slavs shall rediscover honour. They shall dig their weapons from the earth. Teach us your litany of revenge; speak to us in lies and feast yourselves on your caviar, your Georgian champagne, your game-birds and your soups. You are ignoble. You have dishonoured your land. You have dishonoured virtue. Clap your heavy hands as your tanks roll past the Kremlin: then put your hands to your eyes, for the great guns shall turn on you and Russia shall have vengeance. Is that what you fear? Traitors! You are weak. Zion! Rome! Byzantium! All are stronger than Carthage. Odysseus returns. The Greek sleeps. The Greek wakes. Those cities are lost to me. Those virtues are lost to me. Everything is lost to me. But it will be found. The Greek’s words were corrupted and his love was betrayed. Prometheus! Mercury! Odysseus!

Mrs Cornelius came waltzing through the snow. She was still singing her song. I suppose it popped into her mind because she was looking forward to the Bosphorus. She linked her arm in mine. Snow scattered. She began to drag me along the throbbing planks of the deck.

The Steel Tsar longed for God. He won back our old Empire and made us strong again, and though it seemed that cruel Carthage had conquered, the Greek is waking. Byzantium endures. There is an Empire of the Soul and we are all its citizens.

Mrs Cornelius said, ‘Yer get real snow in Russia, I’ll say that!’

I asked her how she had managed to leave Kiev and the jealous Trotsky. ‘I come over dead bored. ‘E come over worried, didn’t ‘e?’ she said. ‘I woz ‘angin’ abart there, waitin’ fer Leon till bloody May. Pregnant, an’ all. ‘E kep’ sayin’ ‘e woz comin’ an’ then when ‘e did it was on’y ter say goodbye. So I got ther lads ter take me ter ‘Dessa an’ ‘ere I am.’

‘The child? Was there a child?’

She turned her back on me as she brushed snow from her skirts. ”E’ll be orlright.’

I became silent.

‘It’s not as if ‘e’ll know any different,’ she said.

I went below. The Chief Engineer was sorry for the Russians. He showed me his machinery. I told him of my plans for new kinds of ships, for aircraft and monorails. He was interested. He was glad, he said, to have a fellow engineer aboard. I asked him when we would be arriving. He told me it would be on 14 January 1920. My birthday. I was amused by this coincidence. Guns fired from the shore. They fired into mist.

I asked him about other craft he had served with. He said he had known many better ships than this, but that the
Rio Cruz
was seaworthy. He was from Aberdeen and had always been interested in mechanical things. We became friendly. There is a kind of brotherhood which exists amongst engineers.

I told him about the flying machine I had invented in Kiev, about my Violet Ray. He said he had certain ideas of his own: ships which would be jointed so that they would ride the waves naturally. He showed me some drawings he had made. They were rather crude. I began to sketch again, to illustrate the sort of notions I had conceived in St Petersburg. I said that the future lay with us. It was our duty to lend our enthusiasm and knowledge in the cause of human comfort. We discussed such matters all the way to Constantinople.

* * * *

APPENDIX A

The Manuscripts of Colonel Pyat

The following are taken from Box I of Pyat’s manuscripts. They were composed mainly on poor-quality writing paper which seems to date from the mid-forties, unless it is of more recent East European origin. I reproduce the material pretty much in the order in which I discovered it, but without the little scrawled pictures. The breaks are mine. The final sequence is translated from the Russian.