‘You were at the Front?’
‘Galicia.’
‘You’ll fight the Bolsheviks when they attack?’
‘You’re crazy,’ he said. He patted my tube. ‘This will fight the Bolsheviks, comrade professor. I’ll be running like fuck for the nearest train.’
I laughed with him. We were of an identical mind.
I left him on guard when I had lined up the available mirrors and tested the projector once more on a paper target. I had slept only a few hours during the whole week but I still did not feel like going to bed. I directed the driver to Bessarabskaya. He told me it was four in the morning. From all around I heard cackling laughter, breaking windows, the creak of hand-carts bearing away loot. We returned to the hotel where I found a message from Esmé. A train departed for Odessa in the morning. She would do all she could to be on it, but she needed extra papers, travel-permits. I telephoned a good friend of mine in the appropriate ministry. I was impossibly lucky. He, too, was not sleeping. Within an hour, I had documents for myself, my mother, Captain Brown and Esmé. I put my permit with my passport, summoned a soldier from downstairs, and sent him to Esmé. For once I was relieved that neither Esmé nor my mother were resisting me. I fell asleep suddenly and was awakened at noon by a nightmare in which I, several years younger, was writhing in the mud, the only figure on a vast, deserted battlefield. There were bullets in my stomach.
I did not immediately open my eyes because I thought for a second I was in Odessa again, listening to the sound of the Arcadian surf. My eyes were filled with yellow light, like blood. I realised that the sun was out. It was the first sunshine I had seen for a long time. I rolled over and looked about me. My apartment was insane. I had not noticed before that it was so untidy. Yellow blood from the sun. It ran in a series of canals, cut across the steppe. It ran swiftly and could not be navigated or crossed. The booming continued. It was, of course, artillery fire. It might have been our own. It had become impossible to distinguish friends from enemies. They battled over Kiev. They came and went. They all said they were saving us. Some cities are fated to become symbols. In those days we lived symbolically in a symbolic city. The mad universe of the Symbolists had for a while become reality. Had all those people I despised in Petrograd been prescient? Or had they created this world because it was the only environment in which they felt at ease. It was a madman’s world. Someone was standing in the room. A young corporal in a Cossack coat. He held his sheepskin hat in his gloved hands. I think he said the situation was urgent. Yellow blood still filled my eyes. I got up. I was wearing my clothes.
Hannibal’s Numidian cavalry drove deeper and deeper into Spain, that pious land; drove deeper towards the shrine of the Holy Virgin. And the steppe was broken by black trees. Burning bronze ran through the Kiev gorges. And I was on fire: and my mother’s black clothes were on fire. ‘A train?’
Cossack: ‘They thought you’d been killed. The enemy is close. You are needed, Pan.’
He spoke with a strong Polish accent. My Polish was weak. Mother had taught me once. And I had listened to her nightmares.
‘Has the train left? The morning train for Odessa?’
‘The emergency train. Yes.’
‘Was it well-protected?’
‘Armoured, I think.’
I went with this Polish Cossack. There were little girls singing a huge chorus in my mind. Pure, Russian voices. There is no sound like it. And still I blinked away the sun’s blood. It was Liszt. I had heard it at the Opera House in Odessa with Uncle Semya. Dante. I could not. My mind was weak. Something had attacked it as I slept. There is no purer sound than that of little Russian girls singing. Magnificat anima mea Dominum! Into Purgatory. So much for the Divine Comedy. I was surrounded by them. Had I wronged them? I could not have wronged anyone. I took what others would have taken. I am no priest. I have never claimed it. It was at the Albert Hall. I should never have gone. Layers and layers of red, all circling down to the hell on the stage; that Bolshoi chorus. But I was lonely. I had lost everything. Some would have adopted a dog. I was tired of dogs. We had had too much of dogs in my Russia. And children never trusted me. Did they know? I am not an uneducated man. The Cossack put me in a red carriage and I was taken up the hill to Andreivska. That red hell of the Albert Hall. I remember the lights. The little girls in their white dresses. They had to take me home in the end. I wanted to hear those voices, even though they sang in Latin.
Rome and Rome and Rome. They said Britain was the New Rome. All she inherited was the patrician. Moscow inherited the priest. Rome and Byzantium, Kiev and Moscow. The voices are still as sweet and I did them no damage. I was clean. I was cleaner than the others. We got to the church and Petlyura himself had arrived. He was furious. ‘Sleeping, comrade?’
‘I worked late into the night.’
‘And so has this fellow?’ It was the soldier with whom I had shared a cigarette. He looked bleak. Petlyura had evidently been screaming at him. There were various generals standing about in coats and elaborate frogging. Some had no insignia. Some had removed their epaulettes. I had learned to recognise such signs. It was almost as good as waving a white flag. From below in the church the priests were holding a service. It was the Kiev part-singing of Diletski. I think it was Khvalite imyagospoderi, aliluya! It was an omen, I thought. Church and Science were coming together to destroy the Red Jew.
‘My machine is as good as ready,’ I said with dignity, i was awaiting instructions.’
‘Antonov’s forces are moving in from all sides.’ Petlyura scowled. ‘We’ve no time to set up further stations. This is the only one we can use. Tonight we shall direct it over there.’ He pointed roughly towards my own home. I was glad Esmé and my mother had gone. There was no more sun. I blinked at Petlyura. He said. ‘You are certain the light is invisible?’
I reassured him.
‘It will weaken their morale. It will give us time to put the rest of our plan into action.’
‘You are going to counter-attack?’
‘Look after the scientific matters, professor.’
The soldier glanced cynically at me. I avoided his eye. I wanted no trouble. My head was aching. I had forgotten my cocaine. I asked permission to return to the hotel for medicine. ‘Have some of mine,’ said Petlyura. He handed me a small golden box containing cocaine. I was not surprised. That entire Revolution, that entire Civil War, was fought on ‘snow’. It was the fuel, far more than politics or gunpowder, of the entire affair. Revived, I noticed the soldier smiling at me in an insolent way. ‘You think I don’t know what I’m doing?’
‘I think you might be the only one who does, comrade.’
Petlyura said sourly: ‘You could be shot, corporal.’
‘I think I stand a fair chance of it today, comrade Supreme Commander.’ The corporal had no fear because he had become so tired. I felt sympathy for him. We were being outmanoeuvred. Even Scipio had needed an army to destroy the Carthaginian elephant. It was all sunshine in those days. The battles were fought in heat, not snow. Only Hannibal had known snow, and that was the kindly snow of the Alps, not Russian snow. Ragnarok come again. Entropy. There is so much evidence in Russia. We are lucky to have our brief moments of warmth and life. It is why we worship God.
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?’