Byzantium Endures (10 page)

I think I was a little drunk by the evening. I watched the red and black clouds roll by on a wide horizon silhouetted with the occasional steeple or dome, the outline of an entire whitewashed village, by slender poplars and cypresses on the estates of kindly landowners who might have been those described by Tolstoy before he went mad. As the sun set, the Cossack captain began to sing a melancholy song about a girl, a horse, a river and a shroud. He tried to get us to join the chorus, but only Shura seemed able to learn it:

Dead eyes gleam from below the water,

The white mane waves in the wind,

Goodbye, little Katya, the snow is coming.

And so on. It is the other side of the Cossack temperament. If he is not riding his horse into battle and slicing off heads, he loves to sing about the sadness of death and the loss of loved ones. In his deep, almost superstitious, respect for religion and his relish for mournful songs, he has something in common with the American negro. I make this observation, one familiar to those who know me, to show I have no racial prejudice. Acceptance of a race’s characteristics leads to an understanding not a hatred of that race. I am the first to say how much I respect the Jew’s brain. Nobody can doubt his cleverness or his ability to tell a good joke on himself.

It seemed a little chilly to me when we eventually arrived at Glavnaya Station, the main terminal of Odessa situated in the heart of the city. Yellow gas- and oil-lamps, as well as the glare of electrical bulbs, illuminated the massive enclave. It might have been a Michelangelo cathedral, with such a wealth of sights and smells I immediately felt twice as drunk as I had been. Shura showed his usual alacrity in getting us off the train. He waved a friendly farewell to Bikadorov and the lieutenants, made a deep, grave bow to the nuns, a sardonic genuflection to the old gentleman, then ushered me with astonishing speed through the crowd, through officials, ticket-collectors, soldiers, sailors, hucksters, painted ladies, family groups, Greeks, Hasidim, stiff-backed khaki Englishmen, and out into a street full of gaslight and shadow.

‘Shouldn’t we get a cab here, Shura?’ I remembered my mother’s instructions.

‘If you want to pay fifty kopeks for nothing,’ he said. ‘Anyway, they’ll be gone. Come on.’

Behind all the other smells of spice and perfume I could detect another scent which seemed borne on a Southern wind. It was salt. It was sweet ozone. I realised with heady enthusiasm that it was the sea.

Out of the night, like a beast from the ocean depths, came a two-car Odessa tram: cream and brass, with lights blazing. And then we were aboard it, our fares paid by Shura, sitting on the big wooden seats and peering through the windows. ‘You’ll see little but shit tonight,’ said Shura. ‘I’ll take you to some real sights tomorrow.’ He had asked for ‘the Goods Station’. Were we going to catch another train? ‘Just to the corner of Sirotskaya and Khutorskaya,’ he said. These were obviously thoroughfares. I did not want him to explain any more. I was enjoying the magic of a strange city and would have resented any description of its limits. I have always hated to be given a map to a new city, unless it is absolutely necessary.

Disembarking from the tram, we carried our bags across a cobbled street and along beside a park full of big trees. We crossed another street and entered a well-lit square consisting of large residential houses, flats and shops. At the steps of one of the houses we stopped. Next to the house was a set of offices bearing the surname of my great-uncle. We had arrived.

Shura led the way up the steps and pulled the bell. We were admitted by a dumpy maid who showed a friendly disrespect for my cousin. We entered a well-furnished parlour. Almost immediately a large, dark-eyed woman in a green silk dress billowed in on us. ‘You were to telephone, Shura! We’d have sent a cab or the carriage. How did you get here?’

‘Tram,’ was Shura’s laconic answer.

She was distressed, but smiled at him. ‘You should have waited for your Uncle Semya to order ...’

‘We’d be waiting still in that mob,’ Shura told her. ‘Have you seen it recently? It’s madness with the War on. Cabs? You’d be lucky.’

She patted his crew-cut. ‘Semya still has some business. He would have liked ... Ah, well...’

I lowered my bags to the carpet. She spread her arms. ‘Maxim!’ A sigh. ‘I am your Aunt Genia.’

We embraced.

‘We are so pleased, you know. And how is your dear mother?’

‘She is well, thank you, Aunt Genia.’

‘Such a burden. And such a brave woman. But so proud. Well, there is pride and pride.’

I accepted the praise, detecting no criticism of my mother. I was to guess, when I reviewed the past, that there had been rivalry between the women. Perhaps my Aunt Evgenia, my mother’s sister-in-law, had offered charity which had been refused. Perhaps they had even loved the same man, my father. Families are full of such ordinary jealousies. They are not even worth puzzling over. How some people will alter the past. I have seen mature men and women become utter fools in their attempts to pretend things happened in ways other than they actually did. We all like to see ourselves in a good light, of course, but the lengths to which some go are quite astonishing.

We sat for about twenty minutes in the parlour while Aunt Genia warbled on like a restful canary. I realised that my eyelids were beginning to droop just as she became a macaw:

‘Food!’

I grew alert. We entered another room. The place was a castle. Here were red and white German soup plates and a tureen of bortsch decorated with scenes of Danzig or Munich. There were two different kinds of bread, already sliced, and butter. I sat down at once, but Shura shook his head and said he had to leave.

I had learned never to refuse food. Also I was becoming so unable to distinguish reality from imagination by that time that I thought a meal would help bring me down to earth. It was wonderful bortsch. It was an Odessa bortsch, like drinking rubies. It was spicy and filling. While Aunt Genia continued to talk, I ate steadily. I was swollen by the time the macaw squawked again:

‘Bed!’

The dumpy girl with ginger hair and a good-humoured face reappeared. She was some sort of poor relation working as a servant. ‘Wanda. Take Maxim Arturovitch to his room.’

My case was picked up in one wet, red hand, while the other gestured to the door. I followed. Aunt Genia chirruped a goodnight and kissed me. I should ask Wanda for anything I required. Off we went, up flights of dark, heavily-carpeted stairs, with each landing smelling a little differently, until we were at the top of the house and Wanda opened a door. ‘I’m next to you,’ she said. She entered ahead of me into bronze half-light and reached to turn a tap to make the gas glow a little brighter. ‘Here we are.’

I had not realised I was to have an entire room to myself. A real bed, dressing-table, chest of drawers, blinds I could open or shut at will, a window: I went to my window. It looked out onto the square - a haze of yellow lamps and dark shadows. From one of the distant, mysterious houses came a high-pitched laugh, something of a wail, which echoed in the square, for it was late and even Odessa was half-asleep. Wanda’s warm, smelly body came up behind me. She showed me how to work the blinds. ‘Best keep ‘em shut if you’ve got the gas going,’ she said. ‘Moths.’ Her voice was lazy, soft and friendly. I was to discover later that this was a typical Southern voice, but I thought then that she was being especially pleasant. Even this heavy-featured creature rolled her ‘r’s with an emphasis which must surely be sexual. I had not heard her properly. ‘What?’

‘Moths.’

‘Aha.’ I was reminded of the moth on the Cossack sabre. I recalled the wonder of my trip, the swooning pleasure of my first impressions. I almost wept as I thanked Wanda and watched her leave. I had a bolt on my door. I had water in a jug on a washstand. I had a chamber-pot and a rug, and clean, white sheets and a patchwork quilt and two pillows in embroidered cases. What generous relatives. And how rich. I had had no conception of their wealth. Mother had told me they were well-off but she had never mentioned that they owned an entire building, possibly two (for there were the offices next door). Again I went to the window. The heavy scent of stocks and dying lilac ascended from the square. I felt a breath or two of the southern wind, of the warm, night sea. Then I went to bed. Determined to enjoy my freedom to the full, I masturbated for a short while, thinking of Wanda and her large, passive body, then of Zoyea and finally, when it was over, of ‘the little angel’, Esmé. How she would be impressed by my stories of Odessa. I lay on my back in the darkness looking out at the open window, enjoying the disquieting thrill of being in a room alone at night for the first time. I put my hands behind my head. I smiled with delight at the luxury. I addressed imaginary friends and told them of my luck. I realised as I went to sleep that in my half-dream I had been copying Shura’s confident gestures. I was already half in his power. And I was glad of it.

* * * *

THREE

I AWOKE in the warmth of the sun’s rays, blinking. I listened for a moment and heard all kinds of alien sounds: the clanking of trams, the shunting ot goods-trains, horses’ hooves and cart-wheels on cobbles; shouts, laughter. And there was an astonishing smell: a mixture of the ocean and of deliciously rotting fruit and flowers, as if all the foliage of the Eastern seas had come in on the morning tide. I went slowly to my window. Many of the stately houses of the square were still shut up, for it was only a little past dawn. And Odessa had her autumn aurora. Each roof, railing, brick, tree, bush and wall gave off luminescence. The mellow colours shimmered almost imperceptibly in the city’s glowing air.

Kiev had its beauty, but it was a prosaic beauty compared to this glorious enchantment. Every outline, whether it be animal, vegetable, stone or wood, was surrounded by a faint radiance. A red and gold automobile crossed the square to stop outside a newly-opened grocery shop. It was like a car from fairyland. The men and women in it wore white suits, peacock feathers, Japanese silks, patent leather, and seemed to have come from a splendid performance of
The Merry Widow.

I expected to hear music at any moment but this was the only sensation lacking. I craned over the small, wrought-iron railing and peered in what I hoped was the direction of the sea. All I saw was pavements, trees, possibly a park. I smelled coffee. I saw girls in black and white uniforms come out into the street bringing jugs to be filled from a milkman’s cart. I smelled fresh bread and identified the source, a baker’s shop at the far corner of the square. A postman went slowly along the street, delivering his letters. Women called to one another from house to house. This was how I had imagined a city like Paris, but never our own Odessa. It was possible to understand why many Russians found the town vulgar, and why so many writers and painters loved it. Pushkin had chosen to live here, for instance.

I was at once stimulated and relaxed. I was on holiday. The conception had not dawned until that moment. A holiday, for instance from school, was when one worked at home. But here, as far as I knew, I had no work to do. I was a guest. I was to be entertained. I began to feel hungry.

Wanda was knocking on my door and calling to me. I realised I was naked and felt ashamed of my body, perhaps for the only time (though I remained ashamed, all my life, of my father’s mark on my penis). Possibly I remembered my dream of Wanda. I called out to her to wait and I pulled on my trousers and shirt. I unbolted the door and she entered, laughing. ‘Modest little boy.’ She was only a year older, but all Odessans are far older, it seems, than Kievans. They give the impression of being possessed by some ancient, sardonic wickedness. Perhaps it is the admixture of blood. There are strains of every country in the world in the Odessan blood. But most typically from the Near East. Odessa itself is named after the Greek hero Odysseus and about half its population at that time was Jewish or foreign. It is probably why the pogroms were so severe there in the early years of the century. People were jealous of the power of the interlopers, though I would be the first to admit Odessa owed its atmosphere to its exotic population. By no means only Jews and criminals lived in the Moldovanka. Fiction has coloured the area, particularly in the work of Isaac Babel who lived there for no more than a week and was driven out by angry residents who resented his prying and his distortions. They say someone was murdered as a result of a lie he had written. My Uncle Semyon was a respectable merchant, for instance, trading with dozens of foreign countries through his shipping office. He undertook the import or export of goods of every sort. He had twenty or thirty clerks working full-time in his office next door and never once was there a hint of scandal about his activities. Neither, I should add, did anyone ever attempt to raid him and steal the wages-money in his safe.