Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

by Michael Moorcock

  Petlyura was mumbling at the corporal. He could afford to shoot nobody. His army might only now consist of the silent generals, the corporal and my ray machine. He said something in French to the only man apart from myself in civilian dress. But Petlyura’s accent was so abominable I think no one understood. The civilian might have been the French consul. He nodded. Petlyura asked me to position the lens towards the woods of Trukhanov. ‘Could you hit those trees?’

  ‘Of course. But I must have the power.’

  ‘It’s being diverted.’

  I directed my machine towards the Dnieper ice. As I pressed the appropriate switch I drew a thin line of heat across the white surface. ‘I have melted it. Think of the civil applications of the machine.’

  ‘Cutting ice seems hardly the purpose...’ said one of the generals.

  ‘It could be of use on ships,’ said another. They all spoke like automata. It was as if they had drawn their energy and inspiration from Petlyura, a source which could no longer supply what they needed. My device meant little to most of them. They did not know why they were here.

  ‘You burned the ice?’ Petlyura borrowed some field glasses, ‘I see the crack. Excellent. In itself, this will be of use when they try to cross. It will be like Alexander Nevski. Our enemies will perish in our river.’

  He gave me the field glasses. They were of no use to me. A general leaned forward and, with a peculiar smile, retrieved them. ‘Thank you,’ he said slowly, as if I could not understand Russian.

  The priests were still singing for their congregation. The sound grew louder and louder. Petlyura found their voices disturbing; I was glad of them. Even then, without realising what I was doing, I was receiving God’s inspiration and not Man’s. I was to remember that moment, when I alone, in the assembled company, had strength.

  ‘Those peasants,’ said Petlyura. ‘They are brutes. They are treacherous, stupid. They betrayed me. They are primitive beasts.’

  ‘We’re all that, comrade,’ said the soldier. He leaned against the parapet, looking towards the window. ‘But some of us are innocent beasts. That’s the only difference. You didn’t spend long enough with the herd.’

  Petlyura was sucking at his weak lower lip. His pale eyes looked from general to general and found nothing there but blankness. ‘Korishenko,’ he said, ‘you will ensure all power is directed to the professor’s machine.’

  Glad to be on his way, Korishenko saluted and departed.

  ‘We’ll wait until nightfall,’ said the Supreme Commander. ‘Will there be any danger? No backlash from the machine?’

  ‘It is unlikely.’

  ‘And what if people get in the way?’

  ‘Tell everyone to stay in their basements,’ I suggested. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘We don’t want to slice some poor Jew in two,’ said the corporal.

  Petlyura and his henchmen were already leaving the tower. Petlyura had begun to speak in his appalling French. I heard the civilian say: ‘What of the Jews? Is there another pogrom?’

  ‘Naturally, there isn’t.’

  ‘We have Jews in France.’

  The men disappeared into the swollen voices of the chorus and I was left with my corporal.

  ‘Did he say anything to that Frenchman about retreating from Kiev?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did he say about the Jews?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  The corporal lifted his arm as if to knock over my machine. ‘I have no prejudice, but I warn you ...’

  ‘What are you saying?’ His gesture continues to haunt me. Did the fool think me a Jew because I had an interest in science? I agreed with Petlyura and the peasants’ point of view on that score. The Jews in Ukraine and Poland turned the very earth white, they bled both countries. The black earth was drained so deep that only blood could bring it back to life. Blood and the sun and our wide rivers which the Reds claim to have harnessed. Who can tame a Russian river? It is eternally free. They tried to make European bourgeoisie of us all, but they failed. We are not naturally middle-class. We are intellectuals, we are workers, we are peasants. Let the Jews find their Zion elsewhere. They shall not have Russia. Only Slavs survive on Slavic earth. The Tatars failed to survive. The land destroyed their khanates. They are the same: Phoenician trader or Zionist fifth-columnist. I know this as I know the devil is in all men. As the devil is in me. I offered the soldier a cigarette.

  The afternoon sun was beginning to sink. Kiev was silent. Everything was still. Trains steamed away from the city. I could see their smoke. I saw figures on the ice. I did not know who they were. The singing had stopped from below. I felt lonely. I could have wept. I wanted a girl. I wanted comfort of any kind. I remembered Kolya. Was he now in prison in Petrograd? Emigrated? With Korniloff or Deniken, fighting their way back to the centre of power? Why were Poles invading Ukraine? They wanted their Empire back. No wonder the Germans came to fear them, as they feared the Czechs. Czechs were famous for their courage and fighting skill. They fought their way home across Siberia. Teutons fear Slavs, just as the decadent Latins feared the Vikings. If only the Empire had stayed together. A Slavic Empire. We should have had a neo-Hellenic world by now. We are the inheritors of the Greeks. It is our Slavic blood, not Communism, which unites us. The Anglo-Saxons and the Chinese have had their day. They have achieved the stability of death. Negativity was never a Slavic trait. We would always rather be doing something than nothing. If the Poles had looked to Germany for their territory, we should not have had another War. Nationalism goes against all rational progress, all the findings of science, all the experience of mankind. Israel! A fresh joke, for now the Jew becomes a ‘nationalist’. That is when we have to fear the worst.

  Warsaw and Prague and Kiev. They were beautiful cities. And who destroyed them? Bolshevik Jews. Hitler could never have done what he did if it had not been for their threat. He had to extend and maintain defences against them. Russia had always been a friend to the German people. And who broke that bond? The Jewish landlord, the Jewish intellectual, the Jewish politician. Is the world waking up to the threat? Not hysterically, as Hitler did, but sanely? Let them have Israel. Let them have the whole Middle East. And then let us build a thick wall around the Jew and say goodbye to him forever. He can wail inside his wall. I shall not listen to him.

  As it grew darker I could tell the requisite power was being diverted. The corporal went to fetch us some food. He returned with the news that everyone had been warned to stay in their cellars. Some thought there was to be a Zeppelin raid, others had heard a story of my ‘Violet Ray’. It is astonishing to what extent information spreads in a city under siege. Gossip, as they say in Ukraine, takes the edge off hunger. My emergency Voltaic batteries were also prepared. I connected these to the transformer in case of a sudden failure of power. The darkness brought relief to me. My eyes were hurting. I could not dismiss the images of death, of blood, which filled them. At least Esmé and my mother and possibly Captain Brown were away by now, racing down the line to Odessa where French order existed, where there was hope. If things became worse, Uncle Semya could help them leave the country for a while. I assured myself that as soon as I knew exactly which way the wind blew I would use my ray to demonstrate its power, pack it up with the aid of the corporal, and be off with the basic apparatus to the French. The next train to Odessa would be carrying myself and my invention. The next ship out would be taking us to Paris.

  There were no lights burning anywhere, but the artillery fire had begun. There were flashes of light from Trukhanov. I directed the projector at the island. The corporal asked me for one of my cigarettes. I handed him the case. He removed a papyrussa and put the case back in my pocket. He began to smoke. I wondered if any Bolshevik field glasses observed his red tip. If so, what did they make of the silence and darkness? The guns continued to fire from time to time. I heard a few yells, the sound of motor-engines, of horses’ hooves on the wooden blocks of streets where snow had melted beneath the w
heels and feet of the Petlyurist army. I pressed the switch of my projector. I saw a flash of light. I think I destroyed a gun. I turned to the corporal so that I could enjoy my success with him. He had gone. The entire church was deserted. Kiev had filled up with ghosts. I trusted the corporal’s instincts more than Petlyura’s or my own. I called to him, but it was too late. He had gone to join the Bolsheviks or return to his village. I was about to dismantle my projector when I heard boots on the steps. I was in such a state of terror I was sure I should see ghosts or Antonov himself. But it was Petlyura, in his green uniform, with his black shapka on his head, a riding crop in his hands. He had a more dapper appearance than the Hetman. He sought an aristocratic image which simply made him look ridiculous. A character from The Prisoner of Zenda.

  ‘Have you used the ray yet?’

  I told him I had destroyed a gun.

  ‘One gun isn’t enough.’

  ‘The machine has to be aimed. It consumes a great deal of energy with every shot. I have done well so far.’

  ‘You raised my hopes. You betrayed them.’

  Two generals stood behind him, together with a few soldiers of lesser rank. All wore different uniforms: some blue, some white, some green.

  ‘I told you what I could do. With another day or so.’

  ‘Antonov is almost in Kiev. He’s moving troops up rapidly. We’re going to have to evacuate the city. You’ll hold off their advance with your ray.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘You’re a major in the Republican Army, comrade. You can be shot for disobeying orders.’

  Someone grinned. ‘That’s true.’

  ‘And you’re leaving?’ I could not believe such perfidy.

  ‘We’re withdrawing from this position. We still have a great deal of support. I think we can rely on Hrihorieff. There’s a strong chance the Entente will lend us troops. Deniken and Krassnoff will have to throw in with us. It’s to their advantage.’

  ‘How shall I leave if the Bolsheviks find me?’ It seemed a fair question.

  ‘You’ll be able to slip away,’ said a captain. ‘You’re wearing civilian clothes.’

  I wondered if I could get back to my hotel and pick up my bags or whether they would have been stolen already. I saluted in military fashion. ‘Then I shall do my duty.’ That duty, naturally, was to my dependants and to myself. There was no chance at all of the Ultraviolet Projector standing off the entire Bolshevik army. Petlyura had miscalculated everything. I asked him where I should meet the rest of the army.

  He hesitated. ‘You’ll hear.’

  He expected me to be captured. He did not want to risk my revealing his position. Some of his generals looked openly sympathetic to me. Others were smiling. I seemed to have become a bone of contention amongst them.

  ‘What if Antonov captures the ray?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ll destroy it first.’

  I thought he was placing a great deal of trust in my loyalty to a cause I had never supported. ‘If they capture me before I can destroy it?’

  Petlyura turned. With a gesture of supremely arrogant impatience he struck with his whip at my apparatus. I was horrified. The tripod wobbled but held. ‘They’ll never guess what it is. They have no money. They can’t pay you. Take it to the French. They’ll give you what you ask.’ He was suspicious of something. He was mad.

  I became confused and distracted as I attempted to right the machine before the precious vacuum tube was thrown out of alignment. But Petlyura had already done his worst. The machine would take hours to re-set. I told him nothing of that. ‘You asked me to build this.’

  ‘And it doesn’t work!’

  ‘You have not given it a fair trial.’

  ‘Very well. Use it now. Sweep Trukhanov.’

  ‘I will do my best. You have probably made it impossible...’

  ‘Destroy Trukhanov.’

  I shrugged and pointed the projector in the general direction of the island. I began to move it as a man might move a machine gun, spraying from side to side. Nothing, naturally, happened.

  Petlyura was laughing. ‘I’m in a hurry, comrade.’

  I noticed from my instruments that not enough power was going through the transformer. ‘The power has been diverted. I must use the Voltaics.’ I pointed up the narrow stair to where they were arranged. ‘Someone must pull that large switch all the way down when I give the word.’

  Petlyura was staring at me as if he believed himself crazy. ‘Will it work?’

  ‘Pull the switch!’

  Some fool went clattering up to it, all spurs and frogging; a military genius who could sit a horse without instantly falling off and was thus a general in Petlyura’s idiot-army. He pulled the switch, of course, before I gave the word. The Voltaics began to arc. The soldier came stumbling back. There was noise and light everywhere. Petlyura screamed and was gone, his men behind him, while I battled with what was left of my equipment. It was impossible to do anything. I opened one of the straw-filled ammunition boxes which had brought my vacuum-tubes. The case still contained a tube. All I needed were the lenses. I began to dismantle them as quickly as possible. Someone returned. There was a pistol shot, the tube on the tripod burst and as I covered my eyes I felt pieces of glass strike my hands and forehead. Another shot was aimed at me. Petlyura evidently wished to be sure the Bolsheviks gained no advantage. It seemed at that moment to be a bizarre act of vengeance. I thought it was Petlyura himself firing. I suppose I was mistaken. I saw flashes of pistol-fire and a dark silhouette. I moved behind one of the columns, onto the outer balcony. All six shots were discharged before the figure ran away. Something was on fire. It was my straw. I tried to pull at least one of the tubes to safety but there was every danger it would overheat and burst and then I should be killed. Electricity still sputtered. The connections had been badly made. My worst danger was from the fire in the straw. I did not save a single lens, a single tube. I moved cautiously down the steps, trying to hear any sound of the assassin. But he was gone. I heard some cars going away. Monks with tapers came and looked at me. They were accusing me. I tried to ask their forgiveness with my eyes but they turned their backs to me. I was too cautious to speak. I still found it hard to believe such hatred and violence had been directed at me. I slipped from the church. A Jew in a skull-cap ran past. He was panting. He held something to him. A bundle. It was a baby, I thought. But it was probably a family heirloom he hoped to save from the new invaders. He was quite young, in his twenties, and sandy-haired. But for his obvious Jewishness, he might have been handsome. When he had gone there was only the heaped, dirty snow. Everything was dead. I moved nervously back towards Kreshchatik but I was hardly bothered at all. The inhabitants had taken to their cellars. All the Haidamaki had gone. I reached The Yevropyaskaya and walked through undefended doors. I went up to my room. There was no one about. My room had been searched. Nothing of any note had been taken. I slipped my diploma, passport and other papers, together with some gold, into a special secret pocket of my trousers. I packed my notes and realised that most of my designs for the machine, together with written descriptions of processes, had gone. I put little packets of cocaine into prepared places in my jacket and waistcoat. I wondered if Petlyura himself had decided to sell my plans to one or other of the opposing forces. There was nothing I could do. I no longer had any concrete proof I had built and tested my ‘death-ray’. I had been thoroughly and cynically betrayed. After some thought, I decided to take what I could and head for the station. It would be dangerous at night. I would wait until-dawn before venturing out. I went to sleep in all my clothes because the heating had been turned off in the hotel. I heard shots. There was yellow blood in my eyes. I writhed in mud. My mother burned. Bronze bubbled through the gorges of Kiev. Suns rose and set over a battlefield which was the whole world. Years went by as I searched for something.

  In the morning I looked out of my window and saw Red Army cavalry riding up Kreshchatik.

  * * * *

  TWELVE
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  IT WAS LIKE A FLOOD of brown and red mud in that wide, cold street. Remorseless and orderly, it flowed to the drone of engines and the trotting of horses; it flowed into the buildings, as disciplined as Germans and as fearsome as Haidamaki. I was looking at a real army, at last, and I was terrified. This was what Trotsky and Stalin and Antonov had built from our old Tsarist army: they had fuelled it with Bolshevik fanaticism and fired it with promises of land and Utopia. A dream worth killing for. And it was a Russian army. It was singing. The men on horseback, or in cars, or those who were marching, they were laughing in that easy, desperate way Russians have when they fight. Not a single Nationalist or Republican flag could be seen in the whole of Kreshchatik. Not a single shop was opening into the thin sunshine of that February dawn. There was only ice and Bolshevism in the streets. Without much hope, I began to finish packing. I dressed in my old ‘classless’ suit of black and white. I was able to light a cigarette before the doorhandle rattled and a tired voice asked who occupied the suite. I went to the door and opened it immediately. ‘Good morning, comrade,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to see you at last. I am Pyatnitski.’