‘Your mother is dead?’
‘Certainly not. She’s as fit as a fiddle. She had anaemia. Now she’s cured. She rides a great deal. She has started an English hunt. With dogs and horses and red coats and all that. But I think you need a different sort of fox.’
‘The English fox is a wary little beast,’ I said. ‘And much admired.’
She drew a pendant-watch from her bosom, it’s gone midnight.’
I was anxious to keep her company. ‘You are travelling on from Peter?’ I asked.
‘No. I’m to go to university there.’
‘At the Koyorsy?’ I had familiarised myself with most of the other seats of learning in the capital. The Koyorsy was for women.
‘Yes!’ She was delighted.
‘I am also a student,’ I said. ‘I shall be at the Polytechnic. Although rather younger than most, I have a special medal.’
She was not impressed. Many people in those days saw a Polytechnic as a rather low-grade sort of academy. Science and engineering are still not regarded, in many walks of life, as suitable subjects of study for gentle-people.
‘The War,’ I said, ‘requires new kinds of weapons. And new kinds of men to develop them. That is why I have been called to Peter.’
She giggled. ‘You’re a boy.’
‘I have already flown my own aeroplane,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps you read about it last year? In Kiev. I flew for some minutes in an entirely new type of machine which I designed myself. It was in all the papers.’
‘I remember something about a new kind of flying machine. It was in Kiev, yes.’
‘You are speaking to its inventor.’
I had won her over. She said with some coyness, ‘I can’t recall your name ...’
This, of course, was difficult. I hesitated.
She raised a hand over her mouth, ‘I am so sorry. You are not allowed, perhaps ... The War?’
I bowed, ‘I am not at this point my own master. I can only give you the name by which I am known in the world.’
‘Spies?’
‘There is some slight chance of it, mademoiselle.’
‘My name is Marya Varvorovna Vorotinsky.’
I bowed. ‘You may call me Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff. It is the name under which I will go in St Petersburg.’
She was delighted by the romance. Quite without deliberate deception I had learned how to appeal to a lady’s sense of mystery. I had turned my whole dilemma to my advantage, with this young girl, at least.
‘Will you be able to visit me in Peter?’ she asked.
‘If you will write down your address, I shall try.’
‘Wait here.’
I waited, my imagination making designs in the frosted windows, my breath adding a further layer to the cotton-wool whiteness surrounding us. Soon she returned with a piece of paper torn from the fly-leaf of a book. I accepted the paper, bowed, and put it into the pocket of my dressing-gown.
‘You must not feel obliged,’ she said, ‘to visit. But I have hardly any friends, you know, in Peter. I hope to make some, of course, at the Koyorsy.’
‘I will do my utmost,’ I told her, ‘to make sure that you are not lonely.’
‘You will be very busy.’
‘Naturally. However, a beautiful, intelligent lady is forever irresistible.’ I flattered her partly from natural courtesy (I have always had a sense of courtesy towards the fair sex) and partly because I remembered Shura’s advice to make contacts with young ladies whose fathers could finance my inventions. This motive might seem ignoble, but in one sense it was absolutely noble. I was prepared to sacrifice myself to further my work in the field of science.
She smiled as I kissed her hand. ‘Nanyana Buchanan is awake,’ she said. ‘She heard me tearing the paper. I must go.’
‘We shall meet again.’
‘I hope so’ - she dropped her voice - ‘M’sieu “Kryscheff”.’
She fled away down the corridor. I was feeling pleased with myself as I returned to my coupé. I had made two excellent and useful contacts already.
My mood was spoiled by the sight of a fat, great-coated major with handle-bar moustaches and a single glaring eye (the other was covered by a cap), stumping up from behind me and growling: ‘You should be in bed, young man. What’s the matter? Think the Boche have captured the train?’
‘I was wondering why we had stopped.’
‘Because of the snow. I’ve been to investigate. We’ll be hours late. Cold’s cracked a rail, apparently. Too many trains. They’re doing what they can. They say. A lot of people working out there now. I’m supposed to be joining my regiment. They’ll be at the front by the time I arrive in Peter.’
As on the Odessa-Kiev express, I would normally have been glad to have spent as much time on the train as possible, but Sergei Andreyovitch’s peculiar behaviour had stressed my nerves.
With some reluctance I returned to my compartment. The dancer lay with his arms thrown out of the bunk, dangling down, a dead swan. I had to dodge past the arm to resume my own bed. I kept the light on for a while as I read an old copy of Flight magazine which Captain Brown had found for me. The main article was about Curtiss’s experiments with sea-planes in America. The thought of a ship capable of travelling on air, land and sea had occurred to me before. Under the shadow of Sergei Andreyovitch’s gently swaying limb, I fell asleep planning a gigantic vehicle, part airship, part plane, part locomotive, part ocean-liner. The size of the Titanic, it would be capable of flying over obstacles (such as icebergs) and therefore be the safest vessel known to Man. I imagined my name painted on its sides. All I needed were a few industrialists with faith and vision, and I would change the whole nature of travel. No longer would trains be stuck in snow-drifts, reliant on lines and the weather and workmen digging with shovels. At the touch of a switch they would be able to lift into the sky. Was it possible to produce a form of hot-air cannon able to melt the snow in front of a train? The old-fashioned snow-plough blade was not very efficient.
Our Russian trains in those days frequently ran on time no matter what the weather. The War had begun to affect everything very quickly. Or rather, I suspect, the War became an excuse for the inefficient, just as the Revolution was later to supply similar excuses. Now the excuses have somehow become incorporated into the system itself. Delays in trains are deliberate. Part of some five-year-plan to make the rails rust from lack of use. And if the reader should wonder why all the inventions I dreamed of half-a-century ago are still not a reality, do not blame the inventors. Blame the fools who were too lazy to build them; blame the unimaginative bureaucrats who introduced politics into science and instead of developing, for instance, the Zeppelin range of airships, or comfortable flying boats, or high-speed monorail trains, chose to devote their energies to making useless economies. I sometimes think Icarus must have crashed simply because someone supplied him with sub-standard wax.
The train had moved forward a little by morning. At breakfast Sergei Andreyovitch stayed only to take a cup of coffee and then sauntered back to the coupé when his request for a glass of vodka was refused. I guessed he was going to avail himself of his cocaine. Marya Varvorovna gave me a lingering, conspiratorial look, which I found very pleasurable. She sat some tables distant, with her stiff-backed Scottish nanny: a woman who wore plaid as if she were going into battle at Culloden. It was loud enough to be a weapon in its own right. I imagined people were grateful when she wore her street clothes, which were of an ordinary battleship colour. She had a long, red nose, fading red hair and even her eyes had a distinctive red glint. I was glad Marya Varvorovna thought it inappropriate to admit our meeting of the previous night. If the nanny had approached me I believe I should have dived into a snowdrift rather than cope with that hideous creature. Even Marya had been clad in a tartan dress, though of a less vulgar collection of hues. She wore what I later learned was ‘Royal Stuart’. By special decree any non-Scottish commoner is allowed to wear this particular pattern. Nanny, I now kno
w, wore the plaid of her own Buchanan clan. It emphasised the tight sallowness of her skin.
I have never shared the romantic attraction of many Slavs for the Scots. It is an affliction common to most Europeans. I remember in later years meeting an Italian who ran a fish-and-chip shop in the Holborn area of London. This Italian had been so obsessed with the Scots he had kept a complete Highland kit under his bed throughout the Second World War. When the British took his garrison, he simply donned the costume and, complete with a full set of bagpipes, fell in with a column of English troops who accepted him, bizarre accent to boot, as someone separated from a Highland regiment. He was eventually repatriated to England where he started his business which was called The Cutty Sark, which means ‘little shirt’ in Gaelic.
But I was a long way from fish-and-chip shops as I sat in the strawberry-coloured luxury of the Wagons-Lits Internationales dining car on the Kiev-St Petersburg Express and filled myself with delicious croissants, marmalade, apricot jam, cheeses, cold meats, steamed egg, aware of the admiring gaze of a lovely young Russian girl who had all but guaranteed me the sexual companionship I had begun to need. I reminded myself to get hold of Sergei Andreyovitch’s address. If I could make contact with his friends I would know where cocaine was sold and might also have an entree into bohemian life. Cocaine, Shura had once told me, was much more expensive in the capital. Most of it was actually imported via Odessa.
The train crawled forward a few more miles and stopped again. This time we waited in a siding while a long military train went past. This camouflaged train had armoured coaches and huge steel plates protecting the loco. It flew various flags and had positions on the roof for machine-gunners. On flat cars sandbagged artillery was guarded by half-frozen soldiers in greatcoats and woollen caps, vast felt mittens gripping long rifles. Not a few of the passengers waved and cheered at the stolid soldiers, who did not wave back.
‘On their way to the Western Front,’ said a young captain to his pretty wife. ‘That’s the sort of stuff we’re sending the Boche. He’ll be done for in a matter of weeks.’
I was heartened by this news. I reported it to Seryozha as he lay, fully-dressed and shivering, in the compartment. He complained about the cold. ‘I’ll never arrive on time. So many envy me. Foline’s bound to give someone my best parts. That will be the end of my career. You don’t know what a fight it is, Dimka, to make a name for oneself in the ballet. Particularly in Russia. It’s easier abroad, where there’s hardly any competition.’
‘Go to Paris,’ I suggested, ‘and astonish them all.’
He gave me an odd smile. ‘I’d rather stay in Peter.’
‘It’s likely every train will be late,’ I said. ‘For all you know the rest of your troupe is still stuck somewhere outside Kiev and we’re ahead of it. That’s been known to happen.’
He told me I was a dear and I had a good heart and that he was grateful to me for all I had done. It was little enough, I thought, but I took the opportunity of asking for his address. He wrote down the address of a friend instead: Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff. He said that he had not yet decided on permanent lodgings in the city. If all else failed and I wanted to contact him urgently, he would always be glad to see me at the Foline, God willing. They would be leaving for America, he hoped, in the spring. He prayed that America would not come into the War or there would be absolutely nowhere to go. ‘At least people are glad of entertainment in wartime. The number of new theatres and clubs opening in Peter in just the last month or two, I’m told, is incredible! It used to be such an unfriendly city, you know. Not like Moscow. I love Peter. It’s the only civilised place in the whole country. But it isn’t really friendly, even now.’
I was disturbed to hear this. I had a feeling there was something Teutonic and arrogant about the St Petersburg citizens. When we eventually began to pull into the station it was grey and smoky and somehow characterless. It was too big.
Sergei was in a hurry to leave the train and get to the company to ensure himself of his position. He kissed me on both cheeks and lugged his cases down the corridor while old ladies and generals grumbled at him. I was glad he had left in such a hurry, for I had acquired his snuff-box, which he had left in his bunk. He would easily be able to replenish it. But it would keep me going for a long while. I would return the box itself as soon as I had used the contents.
My first impression of that noble city, created by the founder of modern Russia, Peter the Great, was poor. It seemed like a mausoleum. The station was crowded enough, full of uniforms, but lacked the casual bustle of similar stations in Ukraine. There were comparatively few hucksters, the porters were smarter and considerably more servile than any I was used to. I had no trouble getting one. There seemed to be izvozhtiks a-plenty waiting outside for fares. There were also motor-cabs which tempted me, since I had never ridden in one. They would be much more expensive, I was sure. The streets of the capital were enormously wide, but there seemed hardly any life on them. Everyone was dwarfed. Perhaps all the life was in the great suburbs where the workers lived. In a sense it was, like Washington or Canberra, an artificial city, very conscious of its dignity. The double-headed eagle could be seen everywhere. Portraits of Tsar Nicholas and other members of the Royal Family abounded. The whole place felt like a series of extensions of the royal palaces. It seemed one could not even raise one’s voice here, unless it was to berate a servant.
I was also astonished at the way in which porters, cabbies and others were treated. Sharp, commanding voices carried through the cold air and bags were loaded into Carriages, horses were whipped into rapid trots (vehicles moved at an incredible pace in Petersburg, as if everyone were racing everyone else). Trams and motorcars, even, seemed better-bred than any I had seen before. They hardly made a sound. And when I gave the address of Green and Grunman, my uncle’s agents, to the cab-driver, I had to speak to him two or three times before he heard me. Partly this was because of the vast fur cap he wore, with his scarlet coat-collar folded around it, partly it was my soft ‘Southern’ accent which was unfamiliar to him. The whip snapped, the horse picked up her feet, and off we went, trotting past tall buildings which seemed to contain nothing but bright electric light and no people at all.
I was much impressed by the width of the streets, the classic beauty of the buildings. Our capital had been called the ‘Venice of the North’ because of the rivers and canals intersecting the streets, the palaces and public buildings, hotels and barracks laid out with precision to provide the effect of maximum grandeur. Odessa could not bear comparison in size or scope and seemed small, comfortable and welcomingly provincial to me. I regretted the trouble with Shura and wished I had elected to study in Odessa after all. I felt like a yokel. If St Petersburg had this effect on everyone (save, presumably, indigenous aristocrats) it was no wonder she had become a hot-bed of revolution. Such cities create more than envy, they create self-consciousness. And many who feel self-consciously inferior will resort to aggressive politics. There was something brooding and haughty, something distant about the city. The sky above was too wide. I could understand, at last, how the characteristic literature of Russia came to be written and why writers of light-hearted stories turned into melancholies as soon as they arrived at the centre of our cultural life.
The cab came to a halt outside a tall, grey building. A haughty commissionaire stepped forward to take my bags and to help me to the ground. I paid the cabby what he asked and added a small tip. The commissionaire wore an elaborate blue-and-gold uniform. I was used to a preponderance of uniforms, for almost everyone had one in Russia, but I had never seen quite so many as in St Petersburg. I told him to look after my luggage and I took an electric elevator to the third floor of the building to where the firm of Green and Grunman had their offices.
I knocked on a glass door. Behind it moved several shadows. There was a pause. One shadow loomed. The door was unlocked. A tall, white-haired man stood bending over me. He was one of the thinnest people I have ever seen. His
hair fell over his face and almost reached his drooping white moustache which in turn touched his chin-beard (known in those days as a ‘Dutch’) which then appeared to blend naturally with his collar and shirt. He spoke good Russian in a whispering lisp I assumed to be some kind of English accent. He asked if he could help me.
I told him my uncle’s name. I understood that I was expected. He seemed relieved and he ushered me in. He took me through two offices where girl typewriters and clerks were hard at work at small, wooden desks, and knocked upon a polished oak door. ‘Mr Green?’ he said.
‘Enter,’ said Mr Green in English.
As we came in, Mr Green moved away from his bookcase towards his large desk. This was inset with panels of green leather. He lowered himself into a matching padded chair, opened his plump mouth and said: ‘Dobrii dehn’ (Good afternoon) to me in Russian. I replied ‘Zdravstvyiteh,’ or ‘How do you do.’ He raised dark brows to the lisping, white-haired gentleman and said, ‘Does the boy speak any English?’
Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet Page 18