Byzantium Endures (52 page)

As night fell and the train became colder I was forced to share the chicken and salami from my very obvious hamper. They were all grateful. Even the woman ate with unfeminine greed. The train was moving very slowly. Since we had not yet passed Vinnitza, it would be a long time before we reached Odessa. Once or twice we heard firing, or saw flashes of rifles and artillery in the distance, but nobody was able to speculate with any authority as to the identity of the antagonists. Marusia Kirillovna suggested it was probably just Haidamaki fighting amongst themselves. I think she could have been right. There were thousands of petty warlords seeking to hold smaller and smaller territories as the major participants moved closer together for the decisive battles of our Civil War. Sometimes shots were fired from the train. We had a Red Army escort which would disembark when it reached a territory occupied by bandits who (like Vietnamese today) found it politic to declare themselves Bolsheviks. Thus they received arms and money to achieve their own petty ends.

Potoaki became bored. He kept leaving the carriage, presumably to use the lavatory (although there was one in the adjoining cubicle) and returning, stamping his feet and clapping his gloved hands together. The woman looked at him with considerable intolerance. ‘Trying to make the train go faster, comrade?’

‘I’m supposed to be at the docks by tomorrow morning,’ he explained. ‘There’s a French ship arriving.’

‘What will you do?’ Another occupant took Marusia Kirillovna’s lead. ‘Speak to each French sailor as he comes ashore? Explain he’s hampering the course of world revolution?’

‘They’re unloading supplies.’ Potoaki sat down beside me again and brought out his bottle of vodka, ‘It will be up to me to find out the kind of guns we’ll be confronting.’ With a self-important movement of his hand he finished his vodka.

‘I hope you don’t broadcast that particular piece of information so efficiently,’ she said. She stood up, arranged her dark shirt, then carefully reseated herself. ‘Has anyone the time?’

I took out my watch. It had stopped. I replaced it in my pocket. ‘I am sorry.’

‘We must be nearing Hrihorieff’s territory.’ Potoaki bent across the dark-faced man who sat reading a newspaper by the window. He wiped away condensation. There was nothing but ice inside and out. He rubbed at his waistcoat. ‘That salami of yours must have been cat and rat.’ He belched, it can’t have been dog. Dog never disagrees with me.’ He laughed. We were all becoming irritated. He could sense it. He apologised, farted, and left the smell behind him as he stepped again into the corridor. We kept the door open, in spite of the cold, until the air was clearer. Nobody mentioned the source of the smell. The train stopped completely. I thought I heard shouts from the locomotive. Booted feet ran past our carriage. There was a clatter. The feet ran back. Our train began to build up steam and again we were moving. Potoaki came in and told us there had been trees on the line. Soldiers had cleared the track. ‘They’re used to it. I’ve never seen such efficiency.’ He hesitated. ‘I’d hoped for a smoother ride. You’d think they’d let refugees through.’

The dark man with the newspaper was puzzled. ‘We’re not refugees.’

‘They don’t know that, do they? What bastards these people are. Worse than the Poles.’

‘You’re from Galicia?’ asked the woman.

‘I spent years in Moscow. And two years in Siberia.’

‘Where in Siberia?’ asked the man opposite him.

‘Near Kondinsk. Then I was a few months in the army.’

‘I know Kondinsk,’ said the man who had asked the question. He looked at me. ‘Are you a “Siberian”, too?’

‘Happily,’ I said, ‘not.’

‘It’s an experience,’ said Potoaki. ‘It gives you a better idea of what you’re fighting for. You live like the peasants. All our people should do it voluntarily. It keeps your feet on the ground.’

‘Or under it,’ said the dark man. Only I and Marusia Kirillovna did not laugh at this.

‘You get your milk in slices up there.’ Potoaki became nostalgic.

‘You had milk?’

‘The peasants did. They were often very kind. You have to saw it. Have you watched them sawing their milk?’

The man opposite nodded but now he was looking sceptically at Potoaki, as if he did not believe the man had been a political prisoner at all. There was a great deal of elitism involved. Whatever your intelligence, the length of your Siberian sentence gave extra weight to any argument you might make. They were like savages. And all obviously were originally well-educated.

The train was going faster. Soon it was moving as rapidly as any pre-war Express. This cheered us. ‘We could be in Odessa by morning,’ said Potoaki. He relaxed.

His fellow Siberian said quietly, ‘I never feel lonely now. Not after so much solitude. Every spring I am utterly re-born. A new person. But with the same political convictions, of course. That, however, is the mind. The mind remains. But the spirit is re-born every spring.’

He was becoming as much a bore as Potoaki. The man by the window uttered a choking, tubercular cough. The coughing grew worse. He began to snort and wheeze.

‘It’s asthma, I think,’ said the woman. She made to open the window. We all protested.

‘Get him into the corridor.’ Potoaki helped the man to his feet. Blood was on his lips. He tried to suppress the coughing and at the same time gasped for air. ‘What we need is a doctor.’

From boredom and to show I was a good comrade, I got up and moved along the carriage, asking if a doctor were present. Naturally, there was not. Any person with a real profession would have refused to be in the ‘political’ carriage. They would have had proper work to do. The coughing subsided as I returned. Ice was falling away from one of the forward windows, melted by gusting steam. I saw a few bare trees and small, snow-covered hills. We passed what I took to be gypsy fires. I felt much better now that we had picked up speed.

I remained in the corridor for the next hour or two, smoking and thinking. I had been lucky. None of the Bolsheviks had questioned me. All assumed I must be on important business because I had arrived in an official car. Dawn came, miserable and cunning. The train’s pace did not slacken. We were at least half-way to Odessa. The woman emerged from the compartment. She was stiff. She stretched her legs and arms like a dancer. Her pistol was on her hip. I realised, with a hint of amusement, that both skirt and black blouse were of heavy silk. She had not had a deprived childhood. She was used to the best. She nodded to me and asked for a cigarette which I willingly gave her. I had several hundred with me. They were likely to prove invaluable. We smoked. She rubbed at her neck. She seemed paler. I wondered if she were Jewish. There was something about her mouth. She yawned, looking out onto the grey snow. The sky was heavy and melancholy. There was yellow-grey mist hanging between it and the land. I have never really seen anything like it since. It seemed to depress her. I had a stupid impulse to put my arm around her shoulders (though she was almost as tall as me). I motioned. She looked into my face. She seemed startled. She said rapidly: ‘You’re tired. You should rest.’

‘Aha,’ I said. This was significant, even to me.

‘You must have a great deal on your mind. Too much thinking is exhausting, eh?’

‘Oh, indeed, Marusia Kirillovna.’

She hesitated. ‘I’m disturbing you?’

‘Not at all.’ I put my hand out to her without touching her. ‘I’m bored.’

This relieved her. ‘I can’t stand being still. It’s what makes a revolutionary, I suppose. Impatience.’

As one whose main virtue is patience, I could say nothing. Perhaps her generalisation was correct and that was why I was not a revolutionary. I have no patience with fools; but you will not find me complaining after five minutes if a bus does not come along.

She continued. ‘One desires to create Utopia overnight. It’s hard to understand, isn’t it, why people resist? They haven’t the imagination, I suppose. Or the vision. We have to supply that. It’s our function. We all have a role.’

I nodded. The train slowed, then gained speed. It drummed down a gradient, turning in a long curve, and everything was grey, including the locomotive, part of which I could now see. Our skins were grey. The windows were grey. The smoke from our grey cigarettes blended together to form a single grey cloud near the ceiling.

‘But what is duty, I wonder?’ asked Marusia Kirillovna.

There came a noise from outside the train. I looked up at the embankment. I saw men in heavy coats squatting behind machine-guns. Others were mounted. They fired at us with carbines.

The glass shattered. I fell to the floor, bearing Marusia Kirillovna with me. The train began to shriek and shudder. Cold air filled the squealing corridor. The train jolted as if mortally wounded, skidding down the gradient for a few more yards. It twitched and became lifeless, save for the sound of steam escaping, like the last breaths of a corpse.

Marusia Kirillovna’s blood stained my shirt and jacket. It warmed my hands. Her face was all blood. The only thing I could recognise was one sad and disapproving eye. Even as I crawled back towards the compartment I thought she had died exactly as her romantic nature might have demanded. Few of us are given the opportunity.

The Bolsheviks in my compartment were searching in their luggage for the pistols they all seemed to carry. I was astonished to see so much metal in those limp hands. I pulled my own bags down from the rack and, pushing them ahead of me, scrambled through the connecting door into the next carriage. I had no wish to be identified with the Reds.

I found myself in a press of peasants who screamed uncontrollably or sat with their hands covering their heads. The glass here had also been shattered. Several people were wounded while others were quite dead, sitting bolt upright between fellow passengers who could not or did not wish to move. It was a peculiar moment. The peasants thought I was an official. They began asking me what had happened. I said I intended to find out. They must let me through. They pushed one another back, some even removing their caps, to allow me to pass. There were more machine-guns firing. It was from our side. Another volley. There were shouts from the embankment and from our own soldiers. The firing stopped. They seemed to be parleying.

I reached the end of the second carriage and decided to wait where I was. The lavatory was occupied. I balanced my bags on top of some sacks and moved a little distance away, as if I were merely waiting to use the lavatory. Through the broken glass I saw stocky figures stumbling down the embankment. They made dark scars in the snow. They were laughing and using words like ‘comrade’ and ‘soviet’. I began to feel a little less anxious. These were Bolsheviks who had fired on us by accident. They were a long way from Bolshevik lines and wore no red stars. Indeed, they had no identifiable uniforms at all. I guessed they were irregulars.

* * * *

THIRTEEN

THEY WERE USING a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian which was easy enough to understand. At least half of what they shouted was slogans. The attackers had begun to argue with the defenders. They needed supplies. The Red Army soldiers pointed out that the train only carried passengers. I heard one of the newcomers laugh. ‘They’ll have supplies. What are they? Katsupi on their way to France?’

‘There are important comrades on board. They have work in Odessa.’

‘We have work, too. Give us the Jews and a Katsup or two. We need food. Do you know how long we’ve been out here?’

‘Who are you with?’

‘Hrihorieff.’

‘He’s turned against us.’

‘He’s turned back again.’

‘How do we know?’

There was silence. Then murmuring. Then some oaths. A few moments later sailors came alongside the train thumping with their rifle-butts on the doors. ‘Everybody out for an inspection, citizens.’

They stopped when they got to the ‘Party carriage’. I began to make my way to it, but now the peasants were even more confused, trying to get their bundles together. I was pushed back. I managed to grab one suitcase. The other was left behind. I decided to return to my compartment by way of the ground. I had no galoshes. I plunged through melting snow. It was freezing. My shoes and trousers were soaked by the time I reached the carriage. I was climbing up when a soldier shouted. ‘Stay where you are!’