A woman entered. She was small, stocky, like Makhno. Perhaps she was his sister. At any rate, he greeted her as one would greet a relative. She told him his brother wanted him to come to eat. He was compliant. He slapped me on the shoulder and called me comrade. He limped from the room. That was the Anarchist, Nestor Makhno, in his hey-day. He was the best of all who fought in our war, which will tell you something. Even then he drank, but he was cheerful. He had raped. He told me in Paris, after Semyon Karetnik and Fedor Shchusa and his other lieutenants had been betrayed by the Cheka or killed in battle. Makhno was glad of any listener, then.
I was taken to a small barn and put in with a couple of bewildered, unkempt individuals too gloomy at first to do more than introduce themselves. They lounged about in the straw, throwing sticks at the walls. They were also drunk. Everyone was drunk here. They were Abramavitch and Kasaroff. There was an Abramavitch convicted of sabotage in the twenties. He might have been the same one. They were Bolsheviks. Arrested for trying to organise a ‘RevKom’ in a neighbouring village. Revolutionary Committees were banned by Makhno. These were like others of their type, full of whining self-pity and self-congratulation, experts on The People, embittered with Moscow for ‘letting us down’, angry with Makhno who was, they said, politically ignorant. Abramavitch had dark, Jewish features. He was quite young and had a scar on his lip which emphasised his sardonic, despairing manner. Kasaroff was older, with heavy, Great Russian features which had once been handsome. There is a type which will look like Nijinski one year and like Brezhneff the next. He was that: fat with stolen bread and drink. I kept my own company on the other side of the barn. I merely asked the date. It was I May. They found this amusing. I had been a prisoner of Bolsheviks, Jews and Anarchists for two months. From then on, I became more sober. It had been a strange holiday.
I was only with the Bolshevik prisoners for two days. They knew nothing about Odessa. I was taken from the barn by grinning Makhnovischini and told to go to a house they pointed to down the street. I had no escort. I still had pistols, papers, a few bank-notes in my pocket. I must have been utterly filthy. I had not changed clothes or shaved or properly washed for at least six weeks. I was nineteen years old. They laughed at me and saluted. To all who passed me I was ‘Colonel Pyat’. It was my salvation, my youth. The house was wooden, with typical Ukrainian gables, painted in a variety of light colours, with a veranda and a heavy double door. I opened the door. A soldier told me to go through the passage to the back. I walked along the passage. I assumed Makhno had sent for me. There was the sound of water. It was warm and quiet in the house. I heard a girl laugh. I knocked on the door. I was told to enter.
Esmé was naked. She was in the tin bath looking up at me and grinning. She held out soap-covered pink arms, exposing her breasts. Her golden hair was darkened by water. Her body smelled of clean skin and soap. She was shameless. I turned away. A girl in a grey dress was scrubbing Esmé’s neck. ‘He’s embarrassed.’ It had been a trick.
I sat down on a chair, near a screen. My back was to her. ‘How did you get here? Are the Anarchists in Odessa?’
‘The Whites have Odessa,’ she told me.
The grey girl began to whistle a folk-tune.
‘I never got there.’ Esmé stood up in the water. I heard her. I saw her shadow. The sun came through a window in the door. ‘We stopped at a station for food. I was taken by the soldiers. I was raped. I’ve been raped so often I’ve got calluses on my cunt.’ The grey girl spluttered and giggled. They had planned this, surely, to make me upset. But why should Esmé feel aggressive towards me?
‘Mother?’
‘Got off the train. Still in Kiev. With Captain Brown.’ Esmé’s voice was softer. I felt her come close. I stood up and went to the door. She wore a sheepskin. She smiled at me. ‘Max?’
I do not know why I began to weep. It was probably a mixture of exhaustion and vodka. I had wasted so much of myself trying to get to Odessa. I hated her as I wept. She stroked my face and I still hated her. I had suffered for her and Mother. Neither had been there at all. I had lied, endured terror, endured pain. I could have stayed safely in Kiev with Mrs Cornelius to look after me; with my mother. It was not Esmé’s fault, of course, but I blamed her then. ‘She never meant to go to Odessa,’ said Esmé. ‘She heard it was the last train. She said you wouldn’t come. She said she’d be all right.’
‘And you were raped?’
‘I’m not raped now. I have a respectable job with the education team. We take a train with food and books and clothes to the villages. The station’s about five miles away. I just came in. I heard about you. I asked to see you.’
‘You’ve changed,’ I said.
She was amused. ‘Look at me, Max. Do you want the bathwater? It’s still hot.’
Esmé had been my virgin sister; without vice or passion. My oldest admirer. My friend. My rose. And she spoke foul words and had no shame. She told me to bathe. I was still drunk and dazed. I let the women take off my clothes. I did not mind if they saw my stigmata. I have suffered much from Cossacks with their whips and little knives! And I let them wash me. Esmé was soft. She murmured to me as she soaped my head. They put something in the water. It stung. It killed the lice.
They washed me with their hands, one in grey, the other naked but for a worn sheepskin. ‘I thought it was you,’ she said. She had been fucked so often she had calluses on her cunt. I shivered. I was still weeping. I became very cold. I shivered. I was swaddled. Esmé took me to a dormitory where there were two rows of empty beds. I had a fever, she said. A mild form of typhus. I don’t know. Where have you been? Everywhere, I told her. With the Bolsheviks? With that Brodmann and his gang who came? I was away. No, I said, I was only with them because I was searching for you. I thought you were in Odessa. Are you an Anarchist, Esmé? She said she did not have to be. She was a nurse. She worked on the education train. There were two doctors, both Jews, who also helped. Seamstresses. It was a community, she said, in which some sort of order flourished. Though it was protected by Makhno’s bayonets. Soon these would go. Why? Because the Whites were advancing. The Don Cossacks were on their way and Makhno had let too many units help the Reds. But it would be a while yet, she thought. Who raped you? I asked her. Many, she said. Who? It was true, she said, a Cossack whipped you. The beast. Did Brodmann rape you? I asked. That swine! She said no. Makhno? He saved my life, she said. It was not much of a rape. It was a token. His wife knows what he does. She tries to stop him. He feels bad afterwards. He’s drunk. His men expect it of him. Not here, but out there. The ones here know him and his two brothers. He should not have raped you, Esmé. It was a token. You should have been there when the first one happened. I trembled. I felt sick, but all there was in my stomach was vodka. It returned as bile. Esmé! Esmé! I can nurse you for today, she said. It was good I came here. Who else? Raped me? She laughed. Lots. It’s silly. It’s over. I’m doing my job again. I have a boy. He wants to marry me. It was quiet in the dormitory. There was no one there. I was confused. She stroked my whole body. My new, clean, body. She held my cock. She stroked it. I began to relax. I love you, Esmé. I love you, Max. She stroked my cock. She stroked my nipples. She stroked my face. She put ointment on Grishenko’s marks. She told me I would be better. She loved me. Esmé. Raped by Jews and Bolsheviks, yet still you were full of pity. We could have been married as Mother wanted. Lived in that village. Where are you? You said I had a fever. I did not know you left while I slept.
A week later she returned. Now the dormitory was filled with dozens of wounded men. She was tired. She was slatternly. She was a slut. She helped the others more than she helped me. I was her own brother. She nursed the very men who raped her. I was sweating. Without vodka, which had controlled it, the fever increased. Those Jews had poisoned me. They put a piece of iron in my stomach. I had been ill for months. I was dying. She soothed the others, just as if they were me. Mrs Cornelius would not have done that. She would have left me alone. They had poisoned me. I had been right to mistrust them. I had been a fool. The men made too much noise. They stank of gangrene, of blood and cordite. They were hideous.