Byzantium Endures: Pyat Quartet

by Michael Moorcock

  I was shaking. I sat on a step in the doorway of an abandoned shop and watched the cars and horses come and go. The city had achieved a peculiar radiance, like a half-resurrected terminal patient: they seem to gain health just before they die. I think it is because they begin to relax and become reconciled to making the most of what is left. When I was strong enough I walked to the harbour, but the Nicholas area had been for some reason cordoned off. I heard more shooting. I found a church. It was as crowded as the railway station. I squeezed in and let the other bodies hold me upright. I did not, then, know the words of the prayers or the responses, so I mumbled. The crucifix was displayed. The priests chanted. Censers were waved. White and gold. White and gold. But God was gone from Odessa and a black sun was setting over Russia.

  I wanted some milk. This made me smile.

  I had discovered that cocaine was impossible to obtain; or that it could be obtained in exchange for solid gold, nothing else. If there had been anything to steal in Odessa I would have stolen it. That evening, I went to the café where I had met my prince and my industrialist. The café was shut up. It had been, said a chalked notice, harbouring profiteers. There was a reminder that Odessa was under military law and that looting and profiteering would receive the death sentence. I was very hungry. I visited several newspaper offices, looking for my friend, whose name I had forgotten. Some of the journalists knew him but thought he had left Odessa or was ‘in hiding’ at his house. Had I tried there?

  There were no trams running to Arcadia. I did not have any money for the fare. I prayed for the tanks or for someone who would recognise me. I was sure Mrs Cornelius would rescue me. Eventually I found myself outside a military headquarters in Pushkinskaya, not far from the Alexander Park, which was now a wasteland. I entered, introduced myself in my usual fashion, and said that I had become separated from my unit. I said I had been with the tanks. I was told that I might be able to get a train to Nikolaieff. The tanks were on their way to that city. They were needed to help put down an uprising. I asked if I could send a cable to Kiev. They said that unless I had a priority order I would have to wait. They were kind enough. They offered me a chair. I told them I had been the observer in the aircraft. They were sympathetic to learn of the crash. ‘The ridiculous thing is, we had more information than we could handle.’ It grew colder. It was almost September. I sat in the military post with some tea and a piece of biscuit and chatted with the soldiers on duty. I was all but starving to death. I had become quite used to it and almost enjoyed the sensation of euphoria and self-possession which comes. We made jokes together as I wasted away.

  He came out of the city of ancient tiers to impose his will on what little was left of our Enlightenment. Revenging atavist, furious failed priest. He descended upon the city built at the command of the woman Voltaire advised: Catherine the Great. Odessa was founded on August 22, 1794, in the first era of modern revolutions: the Age of Reason. A city of Pushkin and Lermontov. The Bolsheviks have left their statues alone. They have put up new ones. They have named ships after them. Russia has become a Disneyland of Human Dignity. There is a deep insult, if you like. They name ships after writers who would have cried out against everything the Bolsheviks have done to our Russia. The Steel Tsar rode through our streets and he spoke quietly so that none should know how many he killed. The Germans rode through our streets. Odessa, built on Tatar foundations, built on Phoenician foundations, fell into dishonour. Carthage came in on a red tide.

  They will not admit that Russian humanity is their best publicity. Even the beggars on the trains, the dirty station-sellers, the gypsies, the poor, the murderers, the drunkards, are part of our ancient dignity. But what do they show the world? Science fiction. Tractors. Sputnik.

  I wrote a letter to my mother and told her I would return to Kiev soon or would send for her. I told her to bring Captain Brown, if she wanted an escort; that I would pay. I asked one of the soldiers to see that the letter was put in the mail bag for Kiev. He accepted it and issued a receipt. I had done all that I could, for the meantime, in that area. My mother, at least, had seemed happy. I hoped that she was still happy.

  By morning the telegram had gone to Nikolaieff, to the tanks. A reply stated that Captain Wallace sent his compliments. He was no longer in need of a Russian intelligence officer. He added that he was glad I had survived and he wished me luck. Two captains came out of their room and invited me in. They, too, they said, were with Intelligence. They said there was no record of me and apologised. A picture of the late Tsar was hanging on the wall. It was like old times. I became calm.

  ‘I worked in Kiev,’ I said, ‘and for a while was a liaison officer with Hetman Skoropadskya’s forces. Then I was employed on behalf of General Krassnoff’s Don Cossacks. I was gathering information at Bolshevik headquarters. I was responsible for anti-Petlyurist sabotage in Kiev.’ They wrote down what I told them. Times, they said, were confusing. I said I had had to destroy my military identification, but I showed them my diploma. I mentioned that I had been a friend of Prince Petroff and that I had been with the Prince’s cousin who had crashed in the sea. They asked me if I had done much civilian interrogation. It was dull, routine stuff. This was their main problem at present. I told them I had done nothing worth speaking of but I was willing to work in any capacity. I was given papers, a new uniform, a side-arm, a bread ration, a bunk in a room shared with only three others, and some bits and pieces of kit. I also had a pay-book but was warned that pay was erratic and one was expected to forage a little. There were shortages of every kind of equipment. I had become an Intelligence Officer in the Volunteer forces, attached to the 8th Army Corps. It would be my job to vet and to issue passes and other papers to those applying for them. I began work the next morning.

  Within a week I had become rich enough to purchase some good cocaine. I can still remember the frisson as I took my first delicious sniffs. I was not alone. All the other officers joined me.

  Odessa, it seemed to us, had begun to come fully alive again. The houses of pleasure, in a certain familiar street near the Quarantine Harbour, were in full bloom, with a host of fresh buds and petals, and roulette remained the favourite game of the sportsmen, mainly soldiers, who visited them. We would wear our dress uniforms when ‘on the town’ and I had mine at last. It was white and gold, with green and black insignia, made by a local military tailor. He was very cheap. While I was in his shop he offered to modify another fine uniform for which the customer had never returned. It was, he said, exactly my measurements. It was the dress uniform of a colonel in the Don Cossacks. I inspected it and told the tailor I would accept it as it was. Both were delivered two days later to Madame Zoyea’s, where I had taken up residence.

  Madame Zoyea was young, plump and witty. Her colouring was the same as my gypsy’s from the canyon, but she would never tell me if she were the same girl and she would never let me make love to her, for all she seemed to hold a special affection for me. Perhaps she had a disease. Although it was impossible to recapture the old days completely, I was fortunate in meeting several friends from the past, including Boris the Accountant, who had married his girl. He was working for one of the few shipping offices still operating. As a result I came into frequent contact with him. He would do me favours and we would split the proceeds. He wanted me to help him get to Berlin and I was able to supply the necessary documents at a reduced fee. Boris told me that Shura was not dead, that he had deserted, spent some time in Moldovanka and then ‘gone East’, he thought. Wanda had become a whore, in common with almost all girls of her class, and had been killed during a fight. The child was being raised by relatives in a small port further up the coast. Uncle Semya and Aunt Genia had been arrested during Hrihorieff’s occupation and Boris thought they must have been shot ‘since so many of us were’. I put the past behind me and considered the future.

  My fellow interrogators and I were all doing excellent business. None of us was too happy about the system of vetting people and issuing passports
. Our attitude was simply that we could not blame anyone for wanting to leave. Red or White, they would at least be clear of Russia. We worked in a large room which was always full and, even as winter advanced on the city, always stuffy. We worked hard. We were conscientious enough. Our main job was to check for too much gold being taken out and to consult a list of people wanted for questioning. As Christmas approached, I began to make plans for leaving both Odessa and my job behind. I had my real work to start. It was obvious that I should be hampered at home. I would go abroad, send for my mother when the time was right, and make my reputation either as a teacher at a Western university, or as an engineer and inventor, perhaps in France or America. The cocaine had restored me to my old optimism, judgement and vigour. I was able to work during the day, calming, consoling, making arrangements for people, weeding out the undeserving from the mass of petitioners; and I was able to play at night.

  Once, at the roulette in Zoyea’s, I was drinking a glass of bad anis when I thought I saw Mrs Cornelius, in an Erté frock of gold and black, pass through the room. But I had become used to hallucinations by then. Esmé, my mother, Captain Brown, Kolya, Shura, Katya, Grishenko, Yermeloff, Makhno, even Wanda and Herr Lustgarten, seemed to appear in crowds from time to time. My money was on the black. I lost it.

  I asked after an Englishwoman amongst my companions. I asked Zoyea. She shook her plump head and said that Englishwomen did not frequent such establishments. She was amused. ‘Very few English men come here. They have an Empire which speaks English, just so they can feel at home wherever they go.’

  East is East, says Sir Rudyard Kipling, the poet, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet: but they met in South Russia, in my Ukraine; the borderland, the no-man’s-land, the marches where the Heroes of Kiev fought for Christendom as no other Heroes fought before. Russian chivalry was destroyed in Ukraine in 1920. The mother-city was raped; the Mother of God was cast out. Later the Germans came. I think the X-rays are wrong. There is a piece of shrapnel in my stomach. It is a war-wound. But so much for doctors and their socialist health schemes. Why should they care for an old foreigner? They used to be kinder to us in France. I met Willi. Colette offered me a position. I knew them all. But these days everyone is ignorant. I hated Gertrude Stein. At least I knew her name. Bely and Zamyatin? Who speaks of them today, even in Russia? I used to like the early stories of Nabokov-Serin, though I could not always understand them. He had talent then. Later he went mad and looted his peers because no one outside Russia knew about them. That was why he decided to write in English. And his Russian became coarsened. Gerhardi, apeing the worst of our people, was never my cup of tea. As I stamped passports and approved documents, I thought I was cleansing Russia of decadence. Who was to guess I should still be suffering from that particular delusion?

  History is a traitor. Human goodness institutionalised becomes a vice. The corrupt forces of cynicism attack. Virtue is mocked. Rationalise and destroy. My faith is in God and scientific analysis. What is race but the sum of geographical and social stimuli inducing a state of tribal shock? It can last for thousands of years. Diversify and survive. Serin became self-conscious of his own Russian being; that is where he went wrong. Fear Carthage. I am weak. My temperature is rising. There is no snow here. Stalin’s and Hitler’s racial experiments were too simple-minded. We must interbreed at once. But the thought of the result is terrifying. I am terrified. I do not deny it. As terrified as Man was when he conceived the idea of creating fire. Prometheus, the Greek, the Lord: Prometheus is betrayed. Christ is crucified. When shall he rise again? Byzantium must be purified. Banish guilt: it is the viper in the bosom of chivalry. Russia is betrayed and in turn betrays. Fear Islam. Fear Zion. Fear vengeance. Rome is in peril. Fear ignorant priests and stupid scientists. Fear politicians. Fear old Carthage. They come into my shop. They laugh at my voice. They hurt me. I hate them. I will not bargain. I would rather give them that antique schmutter. Let them mince in the robes of their elders and make a mockery of wisdom. They are unlettered and careless. They have no love. They think of nothing but themselves. This is the Age of the Ego. I blame artists, politicians, psychologists, teachers, for encouraging them. They cannot bear the sight of God. Even when they go to Church it is not to worship: not in their English churches where no one is allowed to weep eyen the most dignified of tears.

  They are outraged by their parents as soon as they can climb onto two feet, as soon as they are human. They are imbued with cynicism. Yet let a man touch a child, be it in love and gentleness, and he is branded a pervert. There is no law to say that betraying words must be punished, that betraying ideas and received opinions are more dangerous than a poor old man who bounces a little girl on his knee and kisses her cheek and strokes her hair and reveals his need to love for just a few dangerous seconds. Imagination can be like the horns of the goat: useful until turned inward; whereupon, in the course of time, the horns pierce the brain and the goat is destroyed. Mrs Cornelius had no imagination, but she was fond of those of us who possessed it. She protected us. It was our downfall, perhaps. She used us, some say. She was a whore, a femme fatale. But I say she gave too much. Mother of God! She gave too much. The strong are often called upon in this way. They can expect nothing in return, save abuse and, very occasionally, affection. That is how God blesses them. They shall sit with Him in Heaven and help to bear the sorrows of the world.

  And why, they ask me, has God created those sorrows? He did not create them. He created Life; He created Man. The rest occurred in Eden. God is not the Devil, I tell them. Goodness is not evil. It is the Devil, however, who speaks most piously of Justice and Love and he is in all disguises: artist, priest, scientist, friend. And they say I am paranoid because I loved Mrs Cornelius and she never betrayed me. She never betrayed my trust because she never asked for it. What harm have I done to others? I should have let Brodmann go to Riga. It was his fault that he insulted me.

  We were working at our desks in that great office, which had once belonged to a shipping company. They would move along in their lines, rich and poor, old and young, trying to look confident, or humble, almost always in reverse to their station in life, and I would take some aside into the special interrogation room, where the business transactions were mostly done, and I would reject those who had not the means to get to their destination. It was a mercy: I knew of Ellis Island and what could happen there. I knew of Whitechapel and how refugees were courted by Jewish sweatshop owners and white-slavers. They would not have been worse off under the socialists. I did my best to be fair. We were not hard men. We were not cynical. We bled no one. Often we would let people through who had no business leaving.

  On the day before Christmas Eve, during a difficult afternoon, I looked up at my next client. It was Brodmann, in his dark overcoat and his homburg hat and his spectacles and quivering lips. He looked older but more innocent. ‘Pyat,’ he said. I was easy with him. I had anticipated such a problem. ‘Brodmann.’ I looked at the application. ‘You are going to America.’

  ‘It is my hope. So you were a White all along?’ He became alarmed.

  ‘And you are still, then, a Red?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course not. They have reneged on everything.’ He sniggered. I lit a cigarette. I told him he had better go into the interrogation room and wait. I dealt with two young women who were planning to board a British ship bound for Yalta, then I left my desk and entered the small room. Snow was gathering against the windows and the skylight. I wished Brodmann the compliments of the season. ‘You’re not going to Germany, then? This application is to travel by train to Riga.’

  ‘From Hamburg I can go direct to New York.’ He was very frightened. I began to understand the power and the wonder of being a Chekist. I restrained that ignoble lust and sat down, hoping this action would stop him shaking. ‘I was never in Germany,’ he said, ‘It’s just my name. You know that.’

  ‘Your Red friends abandoned you.’

  ‘I was a pacifist.’

&
nbsp; ‘So you decided to leave the conflict?’ I was joking with him quite gently but he did not seem to understand that.

  ‘There is no more to be done. Is there?’ His shaking increased. I offered him a cigarette. He refused, but he thanked me several times. ‘Were you always with Intelligence?’ he wanted to know. ‘Even then?’

  ‘My sympathies have never changed,’ I said.

  He gave me an adoring look, as one might compliment the Devil for His cunning. This made me impatient. ‘I am not playing with you, Brodmann. What do you want?’

  ‘Don’t be harsh, comrade.’