‘Maxim, my dear son. Such a joy! I thought we’d never meet in this world again.’
I embraced her, letting her kiss me on my face while I kissed her cheeks. She smelled strongly of embrocation. She was swathed in layer upon layer of bodices and blouses and shawls and I must admit that I was, after the style and good living of Odessa, just a little repulsed. The room was extremely warm. I broke free, in the end, and patted her head. She winced. I stopped patting and said to Esmé, ‘You have been so good. I was sorry to hear of your father. You are a princess.’
She blushed. It was almost as if she wished to curtsey to me. ‘You’ve become so manly, Maxim. Your manners! A prince, at least.’ She spoke with slight irony, but I was flattered.
A great, expressive cough came from where my mother was propped. ‘He must eat!’
‘I have the broth ready.’ Esmé disappeared into the next room and came back with a pot which she placed on the stove, ‘It’s warm. It will not be long.’
I looked miserably at the old familiar pot. The smell from it was no longer appetising. The pot had sustained me since I was weaned. It had been filled, as it were, by my mother’s sweat. I recalled the turnips and onions and beets and potatoes which had gone into it. And I longed for that spicy, tasty, Odessa food. The variety of bortsches, and yushkas, the kuleshnik, the schipanka, the zatirka, kulish and rassolnik, the herrings and boiled sturgeon and sardines, the roast meats with sauerkraut and prunes and buckwheat hash.
‘You must be hungry,’ said my mother.
‘I ate on the train,’ I said. ‘There was a lot of food. I’m not hungry. Don’t worry.’
‘There’s meat in the soup,’ she said. ‘Chicken. You must eat.’ She began to cough again, from the chest, her eyes watering.
‘I’ll eat later,’ I said, ‘I brought you a present.’ I was embarrassed because I had nothing special for Captain Brown. I produced the black and red shawl I had bought for my mother.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘Real silk. Is it from Semyon?’
‘It’s from me,’ I said, ‘I earned the money.’
‘Earned? How?’
‘Bills of lading,’ I said. ‘A profit on cargo.
‘You’re going to work in Semya’s office?’
‘This was a private matter,’ I told her. ‘Here Esmé. What do you think?’
It was a beautiful apron, embroidered with intricate stitching. It had come from Wagner’s. Esmé clapped her hands with pleasure. Her blue eyes widened as she inspected the embroidery. I had chosen well. It went perfectly with her colouring, her blonde hair. I found a packet of ‘Sioux’ tobacco in the bottom of my suitcase. I was by no means an habitual smoker. I decided to give this to Captain Brown. He was delighted. ‘This is the best imported American tobacco,’ he said. ‘Virginian. You don’t often get hold of it. I have seen where it is grown, you know, in the Southern States of America. Miles of fields, full of niggers picking the weed, and singing. Beautiful music, particularly in the distance. I once crossed America from Charleston to Nantucket. By the railroad. I’ve seen New York, though I was only there a few hours. And Boston, too. And Washington. And Chicago, where I still have friends.’ He fondled the tobacco and I was glad I had given it to him. He was the most pleased of all. ‘It’s strange,’ he continued, ‘that I should have wound up here.’ He began to say something in English in a low tone. I only caught a few words and part of a phrase which had something to do with ‘worthless relatives in Inverness’. At some stage in his life he had written to his family asking if there was ‘a berth’ for him. He had received no reply. He claimed to be the black sheep of his family, though it was hard to see why. He was the next best thing to a father to me and a loving husband to my mother.
‘The War is producing many shortages.’ Captain Brown pocketed the tobacco. ‘Everything is hard to get. I suspect profiteers. Hoarders. Things are worse, I gather, the further North and West you go. People from Moscow say we’re lucky.’
‘They’ve always been envious of Ukraine,’ said Esmé. ‘Father believed the Germans were fighting the entire War just to annex this part of the Empire. We’ve the best industry, the most food, the best ports. It stands to reason.’
‘Your father knew what he was talking about, Esmaya.’ Captain Brown tried to lean against the stove without burning himself. ‘I speak as a soldier. They want Russia as far as the Caucasus which they’ll split with Turkey. You can be sure some power-drunk Hun and some scheming Musselman have made that decision already. Why else should Turkey enter the War?’
‘We fought back the Tatar hordes,’ I said, ‘It should be an easy matter to drive the Germans and Turks from our borders.’
‘God is with Russia,’ said Esmé. ‘We always win in the end. We always shall.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’
This discussion was terminated by a terrible fit of coughing. My mother, her hair streaming about her white face just as if she were having one of her nightmares, flung herself half off the couch. Paroxysms of coughing threw her body this way and that. She gasped for something, holding herself steady on the floor with one hand, gesturing with the other.
‘Water?’ said Esmé.
‘Medicine?’ said Captain Brown.
I made to help her up. She shook in my arms. It was a peculiar, spasmodic shaking, as if at first she tensed herself, then released the muscles she had tensed. Her teeth began to chatter.
‘Should we send for a doctor?’ I asked.
‘It sounds callous,’ said Captain Brown, ‘but he will only charge money to tell us what we know. Your mother has become overexcited at the prospect of her only son being returned to her. She speaks of you all the time. She is proud of you, Maxim.’
‘Proud,’ gasped my mother. ‘Have some soup.’ I could tell that she felt both concern and pleasure.
‘You must sleep, Yelisaveta Filipovna,’ Esmé told her. She produced a bottle of chloroform, saying to me, ‘She has waited all night for you. You were expected sooner.’
‘The train,’ I told her. ‘The War.’
Noisily, almost greedily, my mother accepted the spoon. Soon she had fallen back on her pillows and was snoring. I looked miserably around the room. It now seemed impossibly small and cluttered. I saw my shelf. I had once enjoyed sleeping on my shelf. Now I longed for a bed, no matter how tiny. A bed with a white sheet on it and white pillows.
For almost a week I was to live in that apartment while my mother alternately coughed and snored, or occasionally broke into one of her old familiar nightmares. Esmé, at least, slept on the shelf, while I had her mattress in the other room. It was not quite so bad as I had expected. At least I had a degree of privacy, though the cooking utensils and food were kept near me. Water was fetched from a pump on the landing below, but we had a sink and drainage. We shared a lavatory with the drunken couple next door. The couple were only about twenty, but dedicated alcoholics. When the stricter drink laws came in, they continued to be as inebriated as ever. They were drinking all kinds of bad alcohol. Eventually both of them died a few months after I had gone to St Petersburg. At that time, however, they disturbed me every night.