The Laughter of Carthage: Pyat Quartet

by Michael Moorcock

  Before heading for Constantinople the Rio Cruz would call at several Black Sea ports, taking on passengers, disembarking troops and munitions. John Monier-Williams, her captain, was a grey, stocky Welshman with one side of his face badly scarred by an old fire. Though always polite to us, he plainly had some distaste for this commission, the last before he retired. Until now his experience had been with the Indonesian, Indian and Chinese colonies and to him our Civil War was an obscure local conflict unworthy of British involvement. A cargo-carrier converted to a troop-transport, the ship was not really suitable for passengers. Her cabins were mainly communal dormitories segregating men from women and children. Though Mrs Cornelius and myself had a private cabin, the necessary pretence of being husband and wife created unexpected discomforts for me, particularly at night, since she remained true to her Frenchman while I burned with lust in the bunk above. Mrs Cornelius was a wonderfully voluptuous woman. At that age (her early twenties) she was in her prime. It was impossible for me to put her soft pink flesh and erotic smell out of my thoughts. From time to time in her sleep she would interrupt her own delicious snores by murmuring and smacking those full, sensual lips, amplifying my desire and causing me to nurse both my homesickness and my poor, swollen penis for hours on end as the ship waded through dark, heavy seas, creaking, sighing and occasionally giving off mysterious coughing sounds, like an overburdened camel.

  The other passengers were predominantly Ukrainians of the merchant class; nouveaux riches for whom I had little patience. When they were not merely dull the women were self-conscious snobs, the men complacent bores and their children and servants odious. Most pretended to noble birth; all constantly bemoaned the loss of ‘everything’ and all seemed to have carried at least two fur coats and three diamond necklaces aboard. They were war-profiteers fleeing the vengeance of the Bolsheviks, and a large percentage were Jews. I had vetted many such during my days in the Intelligence Corps and could smell them out. One or two must certainly have recognised me and initiated the malicious rumours which soon circulated: I was a Red spy, a German official or even, ironically, a Jew. I became aware of passengers who were either embarrassed in my presence or else obsequiously pleasant. My response was to avoid them. Happily, Mrs Cornelius and I did not have to mix with them much. We were invited from the start to eat at the small table set aside for Mr Thompson and most of the other ship’s officers who, because of the crowded conditions, were no longer in possession of their own messroom. Starved of English, Mrs Cornelius gladly accepted. They in turn enjoyed her humour. Their company was far more intelligent and agreeable to me than that of my own countrymen so I too was pleased with the arrangement.

  We steamed on through white ectoplasmic haze, through blizzards and troubled water and, because we had not yet left Russia behind us, I was still subject to painful extremes of mood. Sebastopol, Yalta and other ports lay ahead. I was of course free to disembark at any of them and I was troubled by this. It would have been healthier if my attachment had been severed at a stroke. However, I did not much look forward to reaching Constantinople, which I understood was crammed with Russians unable to get exit visas to more hospitable countries. I consoled myself. After a few days at most in the Ottoman capital I would be on my way to London. Meanwhile I did all I could to drive the memories of Kiev and Odessa from my mind, to forget Esmé and my first flight over the Babi Gorge, the cheers of fellow-students at my matriculation speech, the delightful months spent with Kolya in St Petersburg’s bohemian nightclubs. I made an effort to concentrate on the Future, on my practical visions for building a technological Utopia. My thirst for knowledge and creative impulses were to some degree satisfied in the company of Mr Thompson, who helped me gain an intimate knowledge of the ship.

  The Rio Cruz’s old-fashioned reciprocating engines aroused in Mr Thompson, more used to modern turbines, a certain admiration as well as suspicion. He found it marvellous they worked at all. They had been operated for years by dagoes, he said. Dagoes were notorious for hammering a ship to death. Normal maintenance procedures were anathema to them. ‘They treat their machinery the same as their horses, flogging them on until they die in their traces.’ Moving through the dark, pounding innards of the ship, his red face and hair glowing and his sharp nose quivering with puritanical dismay, he would point out his repairs and improvements, gesture accusingly at stains and dents on the brasswork, at rust and patches on pistons and pipes. The engine-room was miasmic with hot oil. Coal-smoke drifted from the stokehold. In the writhing half-light I imagined rivets bouncing in loose plates and rods shaking free of their rotating arms. Mr Thompson had insisted, he said, on the whole area being washed from top to bottom, every cog cleaned and lubricated, before he had allowed this prize of war to put to sea again, yet one never left without a patina of grime. Mr Thompson thought it would always be a problem on any ship, no matter how sophisticated her ventilation systems, so I described my ideas for a ship needing neither coal nor oil, her engines powered by two gigantic wind-vanes standing like funnels above the vessel’s superstructure and thus requiring merely an auxiliary motor and a small tank of diesel fuel. He was sceptical until I sketched the device for him, whereupon he became excited. He insisted gravely on my patenting these plans the moment I reached London. I assured him that this was my intention. At dinner that night he begged me to describe again the invention to his brother officers. They, too, were impressed. Captain Monier-Williams, who had served on sailing vessels, said he would appreciate my engine’s silence. He missed the tranquillity which used to fall over a great clipper-ship, even when she was racing at considerable speed.

  Mrs Cornelius grinned. ‘I never ‘ad no bloody sense o’ tranquillity from wind,’ she said and burst into laughter shared by all except myself and the captain. Later she would explain the pun to me. Then, however, she had succeeded in her object and destroyed the over-serious tone of the conversation. After pudding, most passengers left the saloon; when Captain Monier-Williams with one or two others went to attend to their normal duties Mrs Cornelius performed some of her turns. Her career had begun in the Stepney music-halls and she had a large popular repertoire. The sailors were visibly cheered by what were evidently familiar favourites although the songs were mostly new to me. Eventually I learned them all and on more than one occasion would escape trouble, proving myself British with a rendering of Lily of Laguna or At Trinity Church I Met Me Doom.

  In the course of that particular evening Mrs Cornelius grew rather tipsy. Eventually I had to help her back to our cabin. She was always a slave to a weak stomach and the laughter, the singing, the movement of the sea caused her to lose control before we got to our door. I helped her to the side. After a while she murmured she was much better and was ready to continue. I, too, could not have been entirely sober, for once inside, in the dark, while she sang The Boy I Love Is Up In The Gallery I attempted to climb into her bunk. She broke off long enough to remind me sharply that we were both ‘on our honour’. Ashamed of myself, I reluctantly ascended to my own berth.

  When I woke the next morning there was pale light coming through the porthole. Mrs Cornelius, still in her pink and black silk dress, was sound asleep. Rather than disturb her (and somewhat unwilling to face her after coming so close to betraying her trust) I washed in our basin and went up on deck. This was to become my habit, partly because I was sleeping so badly below, partly because my lust intensified in the early hours of the morning and it was more than I could bear to lie above her while I desperately sought to maintain self-control. At dawn there were few people about. I could enjoy a solitary stroll and a smoke for an hour or two before breakfast. The only other passenger I encountered regularly was a thin, middle-aged woman never without very thick make-up, her face an arsenical green, her lips and hair bright scarlet. She would sit at a little deck-table playing Patience. The wind frequently disturbed her cards and sometimes blew them overboard, yet, apparently careless of this, she always continued with her game. I began to imagine her a creatur
e from legend, an oracle, a captured Trojan seeress. There was certainly something of the gypsy about her black shawl decorated with large crimson roses, her vivid emerald dress and the red gloves to her elbows. Every morning, precisely at the same time, she took up her position. Concentrating on her cards, she never acknowledged my presence. Her husband, a crop-headed ex-soldier in a kind of civilian uniform of frock-coat and riding-trousers tucked into hunting-boots, would present himself to her the moment the first bell rang for breakfast; then she would gather up the cards, place them in a silver reticule, slip her long arm into his and go below. Although they never spoke they possessed a language of gesture and expression which suggested they were perpetually involved in the most intense intercourse.

  During the first days of the voyage the ship’s main deck was almost constantly flooded. Cold, grey water merged imperceptibly with the sky and sometimes it seemed we were consigned to Limbo; we might have sailed over the edge of the world, destined never to make landfall again. Sitting in the restaurant, which between meals substituted as our main saloon, I would watch the rise and fall of the waves outside. Mrs Cornelius usually joined me at about two or three when she had completed her toilet. We would order a drink and chat casually with the other passengers. They were not, as she said, much of a bunch; but she was tolerant where I found most of them impossible. Those who stood out somewhat from the merchants and their wives were two little neuraesthenic sisters, forever holding hands, whom I mistook at first for lesbian lovers. A portly grain-dealer from Alexandrovsk told Mrs Cornelius he had helped the Tsar escape to Roumania in early 1918. He was friendly with Monsieur Riminski, the ex-owner of Odessa’s largest kinema, who liked to speak of his acquaintance with famous actors and plainly considered himself something of a film star. The signs of age on his handsome features were discreetly disguised with rouge and kohl. He planned, he informed us, to begin a new film studio in America and begged Mrs C. to become one of his first actresses. She giggled and said she would ‘fink abart it’. Riminski introduced us to his closest companion on board, a most unlikely choice, the tall Moldavian Prince Stanislav, pink and delicate and spindle-legged, like a flamingo. The Prince’s scatterbrained wife and their black-eyed twin sons smelled of eucalyptus and camphor and I avoided them, guessing them to be suffering from disease. Other saloon regulars included a swarthy, thick-set Georgian coal-merchant with a dark, forked beard and nothing to wear, apparently, but the same suit of evening tails and wolfskin cloak, both of which grew steadily mustier by the day. A Mennonite farmer, his underfed, shivering wife and five daughters, all in grey, were the only people prepared to speak to a pale, pudgy young man in ill-fitting clothes of the sort a bumpkin buys for his first visit to the city (everyone suspected he was a Skoptsy, nick-naming him ‘the eunuch’ behind his back). Lastly a Major Volisharof, whose white Don Cossack uniform was similar to the one I had packed away in my trunk, told us he was accompanying his little son and daughter to Yalta where they would be joined by their aunt. In Yalta, too, he hoped to find his regiment. His wife had been killed by the Reds. Volisharof was full of his children, forever pointing out their virtues and their vices, their physical characteristics, frequently in their presence. ‘Quick as a rat,’ he said one evening, gesturing with his vodka glass to where his lad and daughter played in a corner of the saloon. ‘Quick as a rat. But the girl’s a mouse.’ The chief feature of his nondescript military face was a moustache waxed in the German manner; clearly it rivalled his children for his attention. We talked about the Civil War. When he learned I had been fighting Reds around Kiev he remarked of campaigning difficulties in the Crimea. He was not leaving Russia, he declared, until either he or Trotski was dead. He had originally planned to disembark at Sebastopol but it had become impossible to know from day to day which side would control the city when we arrived. ‘We can only hope,’ he said.

  Mrs Cornelius, as open-hearted as ever, gave a sympathetic ear to all. Sometimes, to relieve our routine, we sat on deck, huddling in our coats while other passengers attempted to take what they called exercise. ‘Pore fings.’ Mrs Cornelius was amused in a kindly way. ‘Wat the bloody ‘ell’s gonna become of ‘em?’ Their exercise generally consisted of holding on to a rail with one hand, keeping clothing in place with the other, waiting for the ship to tilt in the direction they wished to go, then risking a few shaky, shuffling steps until the ship began her roil back, whereupon they lunged out and clung hard to the nearest fixture. ‘They don’t know ‘oo they are any more, do they?’

  Many of these refugees were permanently dazed, it seemed. Indeed I remained fairly disoriented myself. One never realises how closely one’s personality is identified with one’s past, or country, or even a certain street in a certain city, until one is forcibly cut off from them. For my part I grew increasingly attached to my black and silver Cossack pistols. They remained always in the deep pockets of my black bearskin coat. I would frequently reach in to grip their reassuring butts. They possessed no sentimental significance, having been the property, after all, of an uncouth bandit, and the episode in which I came by them remained a painful and humiliating memory, yet they nonetheless meant ‘Russia’ to me.

  Bad weather delayed the ship for two days. Eventually snow gave way to sleet, the sky cleared a little, then the sea calmed enough to let us distinguish both an horizon and a coastline. Mr Thompson announced our approach to the Crimean peninsula, though we should not see Sevastopol until morning. We would lay off and await radio assurance that it was safe to continue in to harbour. Mrs Cornelius went aft to find Jack Bragg, one of the younger officers (who was almost comically enamoured of her). She returned with his binoculars. Through these we studied the cliffs. After about an hour I saw silhouetted mounted figures racing westward; I heard the firing of heavy guns, but found it impossible to identify the riders or which side cannonaded the other. When Mrs Cornelius grew alarmed, I told her we were well out of range of any artillery possessed by the Reds. The cavalry disappeared and with it the firing. The sea grew still, the weather milder. By nightfall we learned it would soon be safe to proceed.

  After dinner Mrs Cornelius was persuaded to entertain us. Linking arms with Mr Thompson and Jack Bragg (his delicate girlish features characteristic of so many young Englishmen) she strode around the table singing The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo until she fell down. Once more I helped her to her bunk before clambering into my own and lying awake full of melancholy and moral uncertainty. I had begun to wonder if I should go ashore with the Cossack major and fight the Reds. The idea was foolish and obviously my duty was to stay alive, to use my brains and skills in exile where I could most effectively bring about an end to the Bolsheviks. Nobody thought that decision cowardly. My own commander in Odessa had not for a moment criticised me. A White defeat, after all, was fairly inevitable. I would stay aboard. Yet the ghost of Esmé, of what Esmé had been and what she had represented, remained to haunt me. Her ghost questioned my reason, called me back to Russian soil. Why should I love my country, I told her, when the Tsar’s self-indulgence, his stupid tolerance of the alien and the exotic, was almost as much to blame for my present plight as the treachery of the Jews? Russia could have been great. All her resources could have been devoted to the establishment of a brilliant and exemplary new world. Instead my nation lay mortally wounded a mile or two from where I slept. She shuddered in her death-throes, torn by wolves and jackals squabbling over her remains. Raped, she could no longer scream; pillaged, she did not even bother to complain. I had written to them all and offered them a glorious alternative to this. That vision was a thin, bright outline behind the coiling black smoke and the unhealthy glare of the flames; a silver vision of clean, massive towers, of graceful airships, of peace and sanity, an absence of hunger and disease, an environment for wholesome, well-educated, upstanding people. A new St Petersburg might have risen, literally, above the old: a flying city of steel and glass. How easily they could have been made reality, those plans which had been abandoned w
ith my trunks.

  That night, as the Rio Cruz bounced at anchor in the choppy waters off Sebastopol harbour, seemingly a target for every mine lying across the mouth of the approach, I forced myself to abandon at least temporarily my dream of a wholly Slavic renaissance. With daylight, having had even less sleep than usual, I took a fortifying pinch of cocaine (making sure Mrs Cornelius should not wake and see me, for she disapproved) and went on deck. In a hazy glow, the green-skinned seeress was already spreading her cards. She did not look up as I passed. Everything was deathly still and silent, save for the slop of the water, the clack of pasteboard. Off the portside I saw low, snow-covered hills, a suggestion of buildings near the shore, all lying beneath a miserable grey sky. The ship still rocked a little, but her movements were no longer dramatic. Huddled in his donkey-jacket, hands in pockets and cap pulled tight over his ears, Jack Bragg joined me at the rail. ‘That’s Serich Point, I think.’ He gestured. ‘Thank God visibility’s a bit better. I didn’t fancy going through those mines completely blind. You couldn’t see a ship’s length in front of you earlier on.’ Breath poured like exhaust from his mouth. ‘Doesn’t seem to be much activity. I suppose that’s a good thing.’